That's what TMC.net is headlining here, quoting Jan Baan founder of Cordys (and also founder of Baan of course and an investor in some other great IT-industry hits) quoting some Gartner data on BPM middleware market growth. Our managing editor Peter Schooff here at ebizQ headlined the November 25 Baan quote/Cordys press release a little differently, highlighting the worldwide credit crisis.
I interviewed Jan back in June and he explained his view (with which I agree) that BPM middleware software provides enterprises a more flexible approach than ERP and CRM software. But I think the tie-in with the global credit crisis and the Gartner research is just a little old-fashioned opportunistic marketing (which is OK of course).
Remember CRM and ERP are BPM software.
The difference between ERP/CRM applications and BPM middleware is that with ERP and CRM, Act (now part of Sage), Baan (now part of Infor), Coda, Datalogix (now part of Oracle), Epicor, Fiserv, GEAC (now part of Infor), HBO & Company (now part of McKesson), Island Pacific, J.D. Edwards (now part of Oracle), Kewill (just doing supply chain automation these days), Lawson, Marcam (now part of Infor), NetSuite, Oracle, Policy Management (also known as MYND and acquired by CSC), Qad, Retek (now part of Oracle), Siebel (now part of Oracle), Tomax, Unit4/Agresso, Vantive (acquired by PeopleSoft which was acquired by Oracle), WebMD, XRT, Yantra, and Zoho have already hardwired the business processes for you.
But they all have or had some kind of BPM middleware within them, either that they developed themselves or one that they OEM. So the demand for BPM is not reaching an all time high; it's been around since IBM started writing MAPICS 30 years or more ago.
So maybe the demand for BPM middleware is booming as Gartner reports. Well the 30% growth that Gartner reports finding in 2007 vs. 2006 is nothing to sneeze at. But note that the under $2 billion number quoted for market size represents less than 1% of the packaged software market. I'm all for BPM software but the jury is still out on whether it is a winner or not.
By the way, I admit it is a stretch to call XRT (now part of Sage) and Yantra (now part of AT&T/Sterling) ERP companies but it got tough to keep up the string at the end of the alphabet. WebMD is legitimate however because one of its many acquisitions was the healthcare ERP provider Medical Manager.
-- Dennis Byron
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