The very first post that I wrote on this blog was in March 2005, and it covered BPTrends’ 2005 BPM Suites report. I think that this was the first year that they published a BPM annual report, although I can’t find even the link to this report in their web archive and I don’t have it in my own archive. However, at the time, I listed the 13 vendors that were included (about half of which still exist in some form) and noted that it was a “pay for play” report that required that the vendors pay $5,000 to participate. I don’t think that BPTrends does vendor reviews any more – the last that I have a record of was in 2007 – but they have an out-of-date page of vendor info and links that is provided for free.
By 2006, BPTrends was conducting surveys of practitioners, consultants and others involved in BPM, and had published their first State of Business Process Management report based on survey results, with others following every two years (2008, 2010, 2012, 2014, 2016). They’ve now published the 2018 State of Business Process Management report, sponsored by Red Hat and Signavio, who get top billing on the front page of the report but presumably no editorial control or special treatment in the report since it’s not a review of products but rather a state of the industry/market report based on the results of surveys. Since BPTrends has been creating and analyzing BPM surveys since 2005, they have a good view of how the market is evolving.