Posts by DavidKelly
IBM Expands SOA with BPM Products
In September, IBM made announcements that strengthened its position as a leader in services oriented architectures and established its position in the important Business Process Management market. While the company has long espoused services oriented architecture (SOA) as a means for organizations to create flexible, business-oriented computing environments, the recent announcements build on IBM’s existing SOA capabilities and add specific BPM products and tools, tying the two closely together. The results are a BPM offering with a strong foundation based on SOA as well as a seasoned services team and partner network to ensure customer success.
The product announcements related to SOA and BPM are focused around IBM’s WebSphere software, tying in Rational and Tivoli software as well as acquired software such as the CrossRoads and Ascential solutions. Specifically, the following products were announced:
– WebSphere Business Modeler, a business-analyst level tool for modeling and designing process flows for SOAs, based on the Eclipse application development tool.
– WebSphere Integration Developer, an Eclipse-based application development tool for IT to build and deploy business processes based on a services-oriented architecture.
– WebSphere Enterprise Service Bus (ESB), an ESB that provides connectivity and integration for Web Services-based applications.
– WebSphere Process Server is a new process server powered by WebSphere ESB that forms the foundation for IBM?s BPM solution.
– WebSphere Message Broker, a new version of the message broker that provides advanced ESB functionality to provide connectivity and data transformation for non-standards-based applications.
– WebSphere Business Monitor has been enhanced to monitor business process performance and provide a way to track key performance indicators.
At the services level, IBM announced new services specifically created to provide ongoing support for SOA deployments as well as IBM’s products and services into a more cohesive and complete solution offering for enterprises. Specifically, IBM Global Services has created three new services: SOA Governance; SOA Industry Teams that are focused on key vertical industries; and the upcoming Common Services Delivery Platform (CSDP), a repository of reusable software assets based on IBM and
third-party software.
Rounding out the announcement was the expansion of its SOA Business Partner Community to include a number of support tools for business partners in the community. These tools will make it easier for the more than 4,000 partners in the network to more easily market, sell and support SOA-based initiatives.
Upside Uptake
Upside Research believes that IBM’s SOA and BPM announcements will have a significant impact on the BPM market from a number of perspectives. The very fact that IBM is announcing a comprehensive set of products and services linking BPM to SOA is recognition that the Business Process Management market is maturing and has now attracted the attention and commitment of a software giant. IBM has long been committed to SOA, and by tying BPM closely to its SOA offering, it is clearly tagging BPM as a critical area of growth for enterprise computing. The additional services and partnerships that are forming around SOA and BPM further solidify this commitment and provide a layer of support and services for BPM that is significant in the enterprise BPM space.
As Upside Research has stated over the past several years, most organizations want to manage their business processes at the business level, making Business Process Management software a unique solution that requires close alignment of business users and IT for ultimate success. With this announcement, IBM has conveyed its understanding of the close ties between business and IT for business process success, and IBM is providing the tools for both sets of stakeholders to participate in creating successful business processes. The alignment of its business modeling tool with its integration modeling tool is an example of how IBM is trying to make the hand-off from business to IT seamless, contributing to faster implementations and ultimate ROI for BPM projects.
In recent reports on the state of the BPM market, Upside Research has identified monitoring, management and process optimization as critical components of a successful BPM solution. While most businesses have identified monitoring and optimization as important buying criteria for BPM solutions, there is not as much use of these functionalities in the trenches today. IBM’s announcement of WebSphere Business Monitor conveys its grasp of the market, and the understanding that optimization and monitoring are key capabilities for enterprise BPM solutions. While most BPM deployments for the moment will continue to focus on automation and monitoring of the existing processes, IBM’s product offering enables its customers to move toward optimization and continuous process improvement when they are ready.
Upside Research believes that the overall solution that IBM outlined is comprehensive and built upon the strong services-oriented foundation that resonates with enterprise organizations. IBM’s BPM offering provides those large enterprises with the tools for moving toward BPM, and customers that are already WebSphere and SOA converts will have a particularly easy path for adoption. For some customers, there may be a challenge involved in trying to extend or integrate the different products that make up the overall IBM solution with their existing products and environments. While
there is a benefit to the reach of the IBM BPM offering, it also brings with it complexity, and IBM will have to clearly articulate for customers exactly what the solution entails, including offering customers tactical ways to deploy the solution. In this respect, Upside Research would like to see IBM continue to refine its BPM offering to make deployment and implementation as hassle-free as possible.
As we stated earlier, Upside Research believes that the announcement by IBM provides validation for the Business Process Management market, while at the same time changing the competitive landscape. IBM has added itself to the fray, and represents a large competitor focused on enterprise deals, one that is intimately familiar with the needs of the enterprise for solution selling and support. This announcement will force pure-play BPM vendors to better articulate their particular value and strengths, playing up the value of a best-of-breed solution. And, it remains to be seen how this announcement will impact the BPM solution providers that are tied in closely to the IBM partner network and have relied on the network for business opportunities
BPM Survival Guide – What You Need to Know Before Selecting a BPM Solution
It’s always easier to understand what you need to know after you know it. That’s why we’ve prepared this brief handbook for business and technology managers who want to learn more about business process management (BPM) solutions.
While trying to understand any new technology can be difficult, getting your hands around the differences in BPM solutions can be particularly troubling because so many vendors are coming into the market from very different perspectives—workflow, enterprise application integration, document management, and more.
This Upside Research Survival Guide provides business and technology managers with the overview needed to understand the benefits of BPM technologies and identify the characteristics of BPM solutions that are important for their particular needs.
Click here to download the complete Upside Research report – BPM Survival Guide
Metastorm Acquires CommerceQuest
The Details
Consolidation in the BPM market came this month in the form of a merger between a BPM pure-play and a relative newcomer to the BPM space. On October 5th, privately held Metastorm announced that it would acquire CommerceQuest, a longtime back end processing vendor who recently tried to gain a foothold in the emerging BPM market. The goal of the merger for Metastorm is to create an expanded BPM solution under the Metastorm brand, using a combination of Metastorm’s existing Metastorm e Work BPM suite and CommerceQuest’s EAI and BPM technology.
The combined privately held company will have a headcount of 160 and combined revenue of over $40 million. Metastorm will retain its corporate headquarters in Columbia, MD, and will continue to operate CommerceQuest’s former headquarters in Tampa, FL for product development, training, and professional services. The combined customer list for the new company will total more than 1200 across industries including retail, financial services, government, and manufacturing.
Metastorm is positioning the merger as a way to cement its leadership position in the BPM market, with increased size and financial stability as well as a more comprehensive technology offering. With the combination of the two companies’ technologies, Metastorm will be able to offer the market a BPM platform that includes tools for modeling and designing human-oriented as well as system-to-system processes, executing them across .NET and Unix/Java platforms, handling integration with back-end legacy and host environments, and supporting high-volume transactions. The company also plans to leverage the different customer bases and verticals that CommerceQuest has focused on to offer broader and deeper vertical market solutions.
Upside Uptake
Upside Research believes the results of this merger can have a significant impact on the BPM market if Metastorm executes its vision well. The two entities are complementary, filling in gaps for each other quite nicely.
Please note: This is a special, abstracted version of this Upside Update. For the complete analysis of this merger, including customer, technology, and sales implications, email us at info@upsideresearch.com.
Business Rules for Business People
Today, business success is not just a matter of how effectively an organization can create or sell products. It’s also about how fast it can react to changing market conditions. Speed, flexibility, and organizational agility have become critical success factors for all companies.
Many companies are experiencing some of their fastest rates of change and the most important process requirements at the edge of their business. That’s where the business connects directly with customers, suppliers, and partners. It might be through something as simple as an application used to interact with suppliers or something as complex as customer self-service or B2B supply chain integration processes.
Improving business agility increasingly depends on the ability to quickly and easily modify the decisions and business logic that drive and manage its fastest changing and most dynamic business processes.
As a result, business processes and applications must be brought out to the edge or front office of the organization in order to meet rapidly changing customer requirements, increased user expectations, more competitive market pressures, coupled with the need to increase revenue, customer satisfaction, and other key performance indicators. Unfortunately, most companies have realized too much of their business logic is tied up in applications that are difficult to modify rapidly and adapt to the challenges at the edge of the business.
That’s because business rules technologies traditionally focused on providing greater flexibility for back office applications. Now, however, these traditional rules solutions have proven inadequate at meeting the challenges constant change presents. They’re simply not designed to address the rising demand for agility in front office applications. The architecture of traditional rules solutions can’t cope with the more dynamic environments found in customer-driven applications.
For example, most organizations need CRM applications, sales configurators and other dynamic front office processes to provide users and customers with the flexibility to explore a myriad of options and outcomes as they progress through a business process. Business rule solutions should help drive this agility. Yet, because of their architecture and original purpose, traditional BRE solutions limit users. Such BREs can’t provide dynamic interactivity—what people refer to as “start anywhere, go anywhere” capabilities.
For example, you may think the most important thing when choosing a computer is screen size. Why not start there and choose other options further on down the line? Why does a customer have to start or to go where the company traditionally dictates? Why take a straight-through, single-path approach? This ultimately translates into lost revenue, low customer satisfaction and decreased opportunity for companies.
What’s needed is a new business rule approach that dynamically crosses a wide range of front office business processes and applications: from stand-alone or embedded applications to business processes crossing application and business boundaries. Think of it as dynamic business rules solutions for customer-driven applications.
This white paper provides a perspective on the challenges traditional rules engines and technologies face in addressing today’s dynamic business needs. It also focuses on the new business rules requirements needed to bring processes and applications to the edge of the business, enabling organizations to rapidly meet changing user and customer expectations and needs as well as to run more effective organizations.
Click here to download the complete Upside Research report on Business Rules