BPTrends’ 2005 BPM Suites Report

BPTrends published a report on BPM Suites this week that reviews 13 different BPM products:

  • Appian Enterprise from Appian
  • AgilePoint from Ascentn
  • XicoBPM from B2Binternet
  • Chordiant Enterprise Platform from Chordiant Software
  • TRAXION Enterprise Business Process Management Suite from CommerceQuest
  • eg work manager from eg Solutions
  • FileNet Business Process Manager from FileNet
  • WebSphere Business Integration from IBM
  • WorkPoint from Insession Technologies
  • Business Conversion Suite from M1 Global Solutions
  • Pegasystems SmartBPM Suite from PegaSystems
  • TIBCO Staffware Process Suite from TIBCO Software
  • Ultimus BPM Suite from Ultimus

The major players are definitely covered here, but there’s a few of these that leave me wondering about the criteria for inclusion in this report. That cleared up a bit when I read the section Participating Vendors in the Foreward to the report:

BPTrends contacted all the BPM vendors we could identify and solicited their participation in this report at a cost to them of under $5,000. All products from participating vendors were evaluated in the same manner: Derek Miers and Paul Harmon prepared a detailed questionnaire which we asked each vendor to complete. They then reviewed the questionnaires, studied the product documentation and all other relevant materials provided by the vendors, and requested a product demonstration. Finally, they interviewed each vendor to eliminate any confusion and to make certain we had not overlooked anything. We did not conduct any actual product testing.

In other words, it appears that the vendors paid a fee to be included in the report, and the vendors provided the content for the report rather than it being based on independent observations. Although the authors have provided some nice summary pages that list each product’s characteristics on a separate page, there are no negative comments about any product, and there are few comparisons between products: this is more like a collation of each vendor’s product information rather than a product review as you might find from Gartner. Still, there is much useful information about the products in the report, and some excellent introductory material including the authors’ view of the BPM space and a summary of BPM drivers.

My assessment of BPTrends’ report: the first 38 pages (prior to the actual product information) contain some great background information. The product sections, although well organized and well written, don’t provide anything that you couldn’t get from the vendors’ websites.