BPM in Action

A few blog posts back, I began my annual criticism of annual analyst product-category reviews, be they quadrants, waves or bulls' eyes. I was clear that I am from the "just-the-facts-ma'am" (Datapro)/"show me the money" (IDC) school of product/market research. My first words as a child were, "On the one hand... but on the other hand." With that caveat, here's my take on the Gartner Business Process Management (BPM) 2009 Magic Quadrant (MQ), released on February 18. Its results will be in almost every press release you see on BPM for the foreseeable future. And, in case you hadn't noticed, there was no 2008 BPM Gartner MQ.

First of all, congratulations to Pegasystems and Lombardi, the two companies furthest upper right. That's the place to be in MQs despite its politically incorrect statement about left-handed people and those that read and write in language systems that work right to left.

You're really not supposed to say this with MQs but Software Ag and TIBCO came in third and fourth. That's the case unless you view vision to be more important than "ability to execute," in which case Software Ag and TIBCO came in fourth and third. Is it better to be further right in or higher in the upper right quadrant? That's the problem with quadrants, bulls' eyes and waves: you need an analyst to tell you what the analysts meant. Remember, "ability to execute" refers to ability to gain market share, not ability to execute a particular business process set. Gartner says it has de-emphasized the importance of industry specificity, just the opposite of what I believe you should consider in looking at BPM-enabling technology.

As is typically the case--and this is my real beef with quadrants, bulls' eyes and waves--most companies were grouped around the intersection of the quadrants: visionary, leader, challenger and niche player. But seriously, how can you separate Ultimus and K2 or IBM and Adobe so finely on these characteristics. Appian sneaks in right above those two giants by the way in the leaders' quadrant. But which of the many Adobe, IBM (Filenet, Notes, Crossworlds) and Oracle (Collaxa, AquaLogic, heritage integration server) BPM products is Gartner talking about (the report tells you)?

Actually Gartner could not separate Metastorm from Savvion; they appear to be tied for fifth. EMC and Fujitsu get to say they'll be moving right. Ascentin, Cordys, Intalio, and Singularity get to say they're moving up. But is SAP really more visionary than able to execute (I guess Gartner is scared off by the SAP Business ByDesign effort).

Gartner says the focus in its BPM evaluation is on "product support for use cases" it defines in the areas of continuous process improvement, support for business transformation, redesign for a process-based SOA, and implementation for a specific process composition. I am not quite sure what the latter two criteria mean (the report tells you) but I think overall the approach means BPM has moved into an era when real-life examples prove its worth (or not). That's a good thing, as I said recently in this post about the Global 360 case-study competition. I agree that it's the value proposition, not the technology, that counts.

By the way, Global 360 came in "in the paint" but just about dead center of the intersection of visionary, leader, challenger and niche player.

The companies covered are said to be "the top 22 vendors offering multiregional, cross-industry business process management suites (BPMSs) that interest Gartner clients and nonclients the most. These vendors account for most spending in the BPMS market. See (Gartner's) Market Share: Application Infrastructure and Middleware Software, Worldwide, 2007."

I am not sure how to parse the qualifier. Is AuraPortal one of the top 22 vendors as measured by spending-based market share? Spending may be the operative words; turn it around to revenue and I find it hard to believe that Aura is larger than Sun (nee SeeBeyond) in BPM. I also don't see how Sun would not make the cut based on the capabilities criteria. No content maybe? That's a little too granular for my taste.

Gartner does explain why it does not include Autonomy, Handysoft, Magic iBolt, NewGen, Vitria and a few others as well as why it dropped a few suppliers previously included in its previous BPM MQ such as Captaris and SunGard.

Gartner says it does not include Microsoft because Windows Workflow Foundation is not a suite and is used by partners, not direct end users typical of most Gartner clients. But what about BizTalk? Maybe "interest Gartner clients" is the operative phrase?

Still unlike my grandkids' little league where every player in the league gets a trophy (something to do with self esteem), note that it isn't called a Magic Quadrants (plural) report? Polymita brought up the rear, in the lower left. Welcome to the big leagues, Polymita!

-- Dennis Byron