iBPMS – an enterprise “Solution”

What is iBPMS?

Recently a new Product Suite, called iBPMS, category was coined and evaluated by leading analyst. It is worth making some comments on this category so that we develop better understanding of iBPMS. Well there are two parts to it. The Name“iBPMS” and what it really means.

Name:

It’s cool name, in line with product names used by company named after popular fruit. However, 5 letter acronym is stretching it bit too far.

What it really means:

This is one requires more than one line explanation.

Was there a need to iBPMS Product Suite category with vendor evaluation?

No.

iBPMS as defined is Solution which by itself means a set of products and services combined to solve business problem(s). Of course, it is expected that product vendor would take necessary steps to develop better/easier integration with a set of products to deliver solution to iBPMS use case. A research note would have been better rather than full blown product category. Though research note wouldn’t have results in amount of discussion that’s going on right now.

To further explain why iBPMS is Solution, it is important to understand what all is expected out of it. According to analyst (put more in readable format), iBPMS is combination of BPMS, BRMS, CEP/BEP, BAM, BI, ESB, CM, KM, Social Platform, Enterprise Mobility Platform and more. Each of these are very important enterprise software platforms and are better left alone to evolve by themselves; there is lot to be done there. What we really require is better integration amongst these products (not just with BPMS). Each of them have very strong set of use cases and can play central role depending on problem that customer is trying to solve. In our opinion, iBPMS as defined by Analyst, contains pretty much all enterprise software platforms that would be required to solve pretty much every problem that customer is trying to solve today. Just to illustrate this by example, one of our customers (using BPMS), came up with program for enterprise Mobility as lot of functions of their operations needed to be made available to mobile workforce. Should we recommend them that they go with iBPMS? Absolutely, No. They need to evaluate enterprise mobility platform available in market from leading vendors and also consider how easily it would work with their BPMS. Only vendors who probably meet all requirements on paper, as tick mark, are BIG stack vendors. Again, we are using term “tick mark” carefully because stack vendors do not necessary have best product in each category of enterprise software.

Increasingly Process has become very critical part of problem that companies are trying to solve. There is still a lot to do in BPMS in terms of some of the desired core functionality. Those who are close to real world BPMS implementations know this very well. It is better not to defocus from those.

For us, BPMS is to Process what DBMS is to Data. We wonder if there was ever a term iDBMS used.

Is there a need for such acronym?

Though the name could have been better, there is.

We have seen RPM (Responsive Process Management) from Progress Software, UBPM (Unified Business Process Management) from Oracle, BPDM (Business Process and Decision Management) from IBM. Every leading BPMS vendor has a term, which resembles iBPMS to a degree (RPM – is no longer applicable, however, it may change with recent acquisition of 4 products by Trilogy from Progress Software). Different term by each vendor lead to confusion with customer decision maker and it is better to have single term and know what to expect out of it.

Conclusion:

We do not see a need for separate product suite category. A research note, is better suited.
iBPMS as defined is a solution and should remain Solution, giving enough space to each of enterprise products, forming the solution, to evolve.
A better (shorter) acronym is needed for solution.

🙂