Arch BPM blogger-cum-analyst Sandy Kemsley references an interesting conversation she had with some webMethods customers at Software AG's Integration World event where the customers "pooh pooh the BPM vendors who don't provide the whole integration stack". To me, this is interesting because (as Sandy calls out) "these customers are coming from the traditional EAI-type usage of webMethods".
One of the challenges in the growing market for Business Process Management (BPM) technology is the fact that there are many different technology providers bringing tools to the market, and each has its own technology background and heritage customer set with its own expectations. In truth, there isn't "one BPM".
What makes things particularly challenging is that it's very difficult to find a vendor that can truly support a rich range of different types of processes from the perspective of modelling, analysis and optimisation; while at the same time supporting complicated integration requirements. The task is particularly difficult if you're looking for an elegant technology solution with no duplication (some vendors can point to good coverage of all the main functional requirements today, but they can only do this by bundling overlapping and poorly-integrated products and technologies together).
It's a bit of a simplification, but broadly speaking, vendors fall into a "business process specialist" camp, where sophisticated modelling, monitoring and optimisation tools are provided; or a "process integration" specialist camp, where the main centre of gravity is being able to orchestrate services and applications in relatively sophisticated ways. The smaller, specialist vendors (such as Lombardi, Pegasystems, Singularity, Appian) fall into the former camp; the larger, generalist vendors (such as IBM, Software AG, TIBCO, Oracle) fall into the latter camp. Interestingly, BEA (and also TIBCO) actually span the camps as they've both bought pure-plays as well as having integration-centric backgrounds.
Next spring we'll be launching a major research programme looking at the discipline of BPM and the technology you need to support it - but until then the most pithy advice I think that can be given to an organisation looking to purchase BPM technology is:
Understand what, exactly, you want to do with BPM. Understand the key characteristics of the processes you're trying to improve, and equally importantly, who's driving the work - is it business people, IT people or both?
Unfortunately, getting to the bottom of things is not as simple as saying "I need a human-centric BPMS" or "I need an integration-centric BPMS".
I agree, that the mentioned vendors (IBM, TIBCO, etc.) have only focused on certain aspects of Business Process Management. However, the COSA BPM Suite (see http://www.cosa-bpm.com/project/docs/COSA_BPM_Productdescription.pdf) is very strong concerning the completeness in the BPM life cycle.
You mention something about a research programme in Spring 2008. Since this is almost upon us, at least those of us in the Northern Hemi wondering if you have any specifics. I liked your pithy advice, by the way.
Jochen, thanks for the kind words about our pithy advice.
The research programme we refer to is ongoing and underpins a new BPM subscription service we will be launching in the near future. It will combine primary user research, best practice case studies, vendor comparison tools, strategic and market insights reports to provide organisations with actionable advice to support their BPM initiatives.
A similar service focused on collaboration will follow soon after.