A comprehensive analysis of IBM's BPM Suite
After months of tweaking and review, our coverage of IBM's BPM technology offering is now live. It joins our coverage of
Appian,
BEA (we're keeping an eye on this, of course, and will update it as soon as is practical),
Lombardi,
Software AG and
TIBCO.
We've been working on this assessment since the autumn of 2007: the delay is mostly due to the breadth of IBM's portfolio (the assessment report runs to 33 pages, whereas most of the others come in around 20 pages) - combined with the fact that, just as we were about to finalise the report, IBM changed its portfolio positioning, introducing the
BPM Suite. Anyhow the effort has been worth it - we think the result is pretty comprehensive and definitely worth reading if you're in the process of selecting a BPM technology vendor.
The IBM BPM assessment report is available as part of our
Guest Pass library, here; the detailed comparative scoring information, which you can personalise in line with your preferences and constraints, lives in the online vendor comparison tool that's part of our
BPM continuous advisory service. Although this service isn't free, you can get a 7-day free trial, so you can use the tool now to see how IBM stacks up in the context of your own environment and preferences -
just fill in this form.
Next up is Pegasystems - the assessment process is already underway.
Labels: BPM, ibm, MWD
Compuware "2.0" - passion or mis-step?
Just to let you know that as well as publishing
two new BPM reports in the last couple of days, we've got another new report in our library too.
Our new analyst
guru Bola Rotibi just finalised her second MWD report, looking at Compuware's recent
"Compuware 2.0" relaunch. Is it a welcome display of passion from a company long known for hiding its light under a bushel, or a move that exposes further weaknesses?
Labels: Compuware, MWD
Two new BPM reports
We just published two new "On The Radar" reports on business process technology vendors in our open "Guest Pass" research library. Both vendors are taking an approach that's outside the mainstream, and both are focusing primarily on opportunities with small-to-medium businesses.
RunMyProcess provides a process design and deployment platform that's been designed up-front to be delivered through a software-as-a-service (SaaS) model - aimed at helping SMEs with commitments to investing in SaaS integrate their applications and augment them with hosted process flows.
Colosa, on the other hand, offers an open-source BPM technology toolset, ProcessMaker, that's entirely written in PHP.
We hope you enjoy them! As always, you can access these reports with a free subscription (you can enrol here if you're not one of the 3,000 or so existing members).
Labels: BPM, Colosa, MWD, RunMyProcess
Links for 2008-06-16 [del.icio.us]
Labels: MWD
Embarcadero rescues CodeGear
In our
most recent report, our new analyst
Bola Rotibi looks at Embarcadero's recent acquisition of CodeGear (the Borland subsidiary that it's been trying to offload for many months) - and asks: has Embarcadero made a smart move or a stupid one, and what does it mean for organisations looking at investing in development tools?
You can
download the report if you have access to our guest pass research: if you're not a member, it's easy - you can
register for free.
Labels: borland, codegear, development, embarcadero, MWD
IIAR Analyst of the Year survey
We were pleasantly surprised here at MWD by the results
of a recent survey by the Institute of Industry Analyst Relations, which surveyed almost 120 analyst relations professionals (for those of you who aren't aware, these are the people that act as our interface with vendors) across the globe.
It won't come as a total shock that we came out of it rather well - why else would I be blogging about it:
- Our most recent recruit, Bola Rotibi, was the number 8 analyst
- MWD was similarly ranked in the analyst firm category on a global basis and was number 5 in EMEA
- We were the number 5 software analyst firm
- We came in at number 8 when it comes to relevance (and number 5 in EMEA)
We're particularly proud of that last one given this from
Jonny Bentwood commenting on the results:
One of the interesting results from the survey is the distinction made between relevant and important analyst firms. From my perspective it appears that people made the recognised tier 1’s (Gartner, Forrester, IDC) as the most important as they realise that these companies have a strong impact on sales due to their customer base and research viability. However, relevant firms did not necessarily map on to these same firms and the ones ranked most highly tended to have a greater focus on bespoke advice (largely gained through inquiry time).
When we founded MWD back in February 2005 we set out to differentiate ourselves from the big analyst firms with a very open and flexible approach which allows us to offer tailored advice to our customers. It seems to be paying off.
Obviously, we're really chuffed with this recognition, particularly as it comes from a group of individuals whose job it is to work with analysts on a daily basis.
We're equally pleased that other independent analysts did so well, particularly our business partners over at Freeform Dynamics and RedMonk.
Labels: MWD
More BPM coverage, and our other blog(s)
In my recent post highlighting our
new line of services, I neglected to mention an important facet of our new BPM continuous advisory service, and the other services we're working on: each service has a companion blog.
The "service blog" allows our analyst teams to not only highlight new research in the service, upgrades, outages etc - but also highlight other research or information out there that's likely to be of interest to anyone working in the area of service coverage. The idea is to make each service blog a valuable resource in its own right.
Here's our new BPM service news blog. The latest post highlights the addition of
coverage of BPM specialist supplier Appian.
In keeping with our philosophy, anyone can
subscribe to the blog - it's not exclusively for our paid-for subscription customers. Anyone can access the
Appian assessment, too - it's part of our "guest pass" research library that we're continuing to add to, even though we're now also offering paid-for subscription services. Just
sign up for free and you can look at what we think of Appian's BPM offering, as well as checking out
BEA,
Lombardi,
Software AG and
TIBCO. If you're a paid-for subscription service licensee you'll get access to additional data that will help you compare these vendors side-by-side, in the context of your own environment and priorities - as well as gaining access to exclusive BPM research study findings, best-practice case studies, one-on-one analyst access, and more.
Of course, if you want to see how all this paid-for subscription stuff looks, you can
sign up for a free trial of that, too... it's easy.
We'll be adding IBM to our BPM coverage in the coming week or two, and Pegasystems should follow in the next month. If you want to make sure you're up-to-date with what we're doing in BPM, just
point your feed-reader here.
Labels: BPM, MWD
