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IBM BPM vs Oracle BPEL comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM BPM
Ranking in Process Automation
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (5th), Application Infrastructure (8th)
Oracle BPEL
Ranking in Process Automation
25th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
4
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 7.2%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle BPEL is 0.6%, up from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Kamran - PeerSpot reviewer
Has efficient processes and intuitive workflow with many valuable features
You will have access to make any needed changes. Additionally, the review will be published on PeerSpot.com in written or audio format, available to other people. You can stay anonymous if you wish. Notifications and the use of the review are subject to PeerSpot's terms of use, which you can find at PeerSpot.com/TOS. I would give the solution an overall rating of ten out of ten points.
PN
A highly scalable solution that provides various features for the execution of business processes
I'm a consultant. I do architecting, designing, and development. I have used two versions, 1.1 and 2.0. I’m unsure about the prices because I oversee the development and implementation. I'll highly recommend the product depending on an organization’s requirements. As someone who has worked with BPEL for 13 years, I highly recommend the product for an on-premise or hybrid integration. Multiple products or alternate solutions have come into the integration domain. However, the product has been in the industry from SOA 11g to SOA 12c and OIC. Though there are multiple competitors, the product has been here for a long time and has been helping multiple customers improve their business. Overall, I rate the solution a nine or nine and a half out of ten.

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The most valuable feature for the organization is the Document Store."
"Compliance with the BPMN 2.0 standard."
"Provides the power to understand and automate processes."
"There are a lot of things that you get out-of-the-box: Timers and so on, which took a lot of effort and code before."
"I would say that I like its GUI designer the best."
"Our customers use the solution as a workflow platform to manage their processes."
"It is efficient in reducing costs."
"There are two or three valuable features, like BPM."
"The most valuable feature is the support for human tasks."
"The product has everything we need."
"The solution is very seamless and fast."
"What I find the most valuable about Oracle BPEL is that it saves me time."
 

Cons

"Better integration with other products in the automation suite."
"The engine itself tends to accumulate a lot of data that needs to be cleaned up, and that's the kind of thing that keeps it from, in some scenarios, scaling as much as it needs to. And then, when you're building solutions, if you're not careful to keep the screens from being associated with too much data, if you're going to just do things the way that a lot of people would just assume that they can do, without having experience of having made those mistakes before, it will accumulate a lot of data, and that will cause it to perform very badly."
"Except for the Lucene the index - we had a couple of issues in the Process Portal where the Lucene index went out of sync, and we had to work at least 15 - 20 hours to have it back in sync with the database."
"Also, we would like to see integration with artificial intelligence, machine learning-type of technical capabilities. Right now, there are a lot Watson libraries out there. Building those integrations more, out-of-the-box, from IBM would be a good direction."
"The major issue is the pricing, which is very high. IBM BPM also lacks smaller solutions, so I must purchase multiple solutions to start with workflows and applications."
"User Interface components could be further refined to enhance and extend customizations dictated by end clients."
"We still have a couple of issues that we are working on right now with stability. Mostly on the configuration side of the tool, and it has been about a month that we have been working to stabilize the platform.​"
"IBM BPM uses JavaScript as a programming language for the server-side. I don’t know why it’s not Java, as it’s more powerful and the JavaScript part is translated into Java anyway."
"In the next release, I would like to see REST improved and new technologies for microservices. I'd like to see more containers for separating containers."
"The solution's integration with SAP should be seamless because some formats are not accepted in SAP but are accepted in Oracle BPEL."
"They need to have support for new protocols like GraphQL and possibly some out-of-the-box adapters for SAP and other big systems."
"Some user-defined functions for transformation must be added to the next release of the solution."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution might be expensive, but I can't give you a precise number. In the market here, I've seen two main products for BPM: IBM BPM and Camunda. Camunda is very popular and open-source, so there's no direct comparison."
"I think it's a reasonably priced tool, but it's important to consider which customers should buy this solution. It's designed for enterprise customers, not small ones."
"Starting out with Express can also help reduce the cost for adopting the product."
"The product is expensive considering the hardware and software costs."
"I rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten."
"I give the pricing an eight out of ten."
"Price wise, IBM BPM is cheaper than other similar solutions and has excellent pricing."
"It may be cheaper for organizations to pay for the Viewer licenses that are immediately up and running in the cloud, rather than paying for someone to administer publishing to an intranet."
"The product is moderately priced."
"The solution's pricing is moderate and not expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Manufacturing Company
13%
Financial Services Firm
13%
Computer Software Company
12%
Government
11%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

Which is better, IBM BPM or IBM Business Automation Workflow?
We researched both IBM solutions and in the end, we chose Business Automation Workflow. IBM BPM has a good user interface and the BPM coach is a helpful tool. The API is very useful in providing en...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM BPM?
Once it is installed, maintaining it is not a big issue.
What needs improvement with Oracle BPEL?
They need to have support for new protocols like GraphQL and possibly some out-of-the-box adapters for SAP and other big systems. It should be better if the SAP adapter were included in the bundle.
What is your primary use case for Oracle BPEL?
We primarily use Oracle BPEL for process automation. It is used for workflows for documents, data transfers, and other processes implemented for our customers.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
BPEL Process Manager
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Barclays, EmeriCon, Banca Popolare di Milano, CST Consulting, KeyBank, KPMG, Prolifics, Sandhata Technologies Ltd., State of Alaska, Humana S.A., Saperion, esciris, Banco Espirito Santo
Nacional Monte de Piedad IAP, Bimbo S.A. de C.V., Intelligent Pathways, DVZ Datenverarbeitungszentrum Mecklenburg-Vorpommern GmbH, Arqiva
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. Oracle BPEL and other solutions. Updated: March 2025.
842,767 professionals have used our research since 2012.