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IBM BPM vs Oracle BPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 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 Business Process Management (BPM)
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (8th), Process Automation (5th)
Oracle BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
14th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
25
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 7.4%, up from 7.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle BPM is 1.9%, up from 1.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

SureshThota1 - PeerSpot reviewer
Good automation, stable, and scalable
The initial setup is complex, but once we have a mature framework in place, it has been working well. When deployed properly and as expected, customers are happy to use the solution. However, there is still a lot of configuration and installation taking time. IBM BPM provides a cloud-fast model, where it is possible to integrate automation of the process and where manual interaction is only necessary if automation is not available. We have implemented an ultimate installation that includes both capabilities, but some features were not enabled in the process access station. For example, I could not open KFC documents, they all uploaded, and saved the data, but could not do a profile page without manual interaction. IBM is still working on a permanent solution for this. The deployment time depends on the requirements, which can be critical, low, or medium-high. If the requirements are critical, it will take six to eight months. For medium requirements, it will take five months, and for low requirements, it will take only one month. Eight people were part of the deployment team.
Neilsen Seixas - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables robust integration capabilities, facilitating seamless connection with various systems and applications
We utilized Oracle BPM to automate various administrative processes within our organization, specifically focusing on eliminating paper-based workflows related to licensing procedures in our environment. Oracle BPM enabled collaboration between our IT and business teams for effective process management. Utilizing the Oracle VPN, we experienced significant improvements in process efficiency. For instance, a process that previously took forty days before implementation was reduced to just twenty minutes after implementing Oracle BPM. This remarkable reduction in time demonstrates the substantial benefits brought about by the solution. The solution is comprehensive, encompassing modeling, implementation, and runtime capabilities. Additionally, by leveraging this platform, we seamlessly integrated Oracle Portal and Oracle Document Management, providing a complete solution within the Oracle ecosystem. The integration capabilities of Oracle BPM with other systems significantly influenced our workflow. Our workflow was impacted positively by these integrations. Initially, we utilized Oracle BPM alongside other Oracle products such as Oracle Context Manager, Oracle Portal, and Oracle Document Management. Despite using multiple products, they are seamlessly integrated, providing a comprehensive solution for our clients. This solution encompassed document management, workflow control, process execution, and automation, effectively streamlining processes and eliminating bureaucratic hurdles. The transparency and efficiency achieved through this integrated approach were highly beneficial for our clients.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Good user interface and good add option."
"IBM BPM is a stable solution."
"It provides value and simplifies 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."
"It has improved my organization quite a bit. It brought awareness to what the business processes are, even to the business side, who did not necessarily know what they are."
"It provides a very robust environment to build an integration framework or workflow patterns that we have. A lot of changes or modifications have been made to this solution over the past few years. The features that they have added this time have helped developers like us to work on the developmental environment and leverage all the capabilities of the tool. This is what I like about this solution."
"The installation was straightforward."
"It helps improve your process through continual measurement."
"This solution has given us a quick time to market, the ability to integrate with the rest of the corporate applications, and the ability to hire talent in low-cost locations."
"The support is good."
"One of the most valuable features is its user-friendly API, which simplifies the implementation of workflows, such as managing inbox tasks for specific users within BPM profiles."
"The most valuable feature is the complete workflow through the BPM, from making it available as a generated code based on the backend, deploying it in the test environment, and then going to production."
"It is quite scalable and can be applied to enterprise-level organizations effectively."
"It is easy to use in a business processing suite."
"I find the data lineage features most valuable."
"Currently, we define the tasks, and based on certain decision rules, the tool decides the task priorities and the time frame of the task."
 

Cons

"There is room for improvement in the stability."
"When you have to integrate files for enterprise applications."
"It is a really powerful tool, but its entry price is so high, which makes it a very exclusive club for who gets to use it. The thing that seemed to be the most intolerable was that you could put lots and lots of users on it, and it worked fine, but if you put lots and lots of developers on it, it sure seemed to have challenges. The biggest challenge was the development because of the Eclipse tool. It just seemed like irrespective of the development team that you put together, whether it had 10 or 50 people, you would end up having to reboot the development server throughout the day when you concurrently had lots of people hammering on the system. The development server just got sluggish. This was true for every project I was on. Once you got more than about five people working on the system at the same time, it would just get slower and slower during development work, and the only way to fix it was to reboot the server. It became just like a routine. Sometimes, we would reboot at lunch or dinner time, which is silly. After the cloud instances started rolling out, I never saw that again. That was probably the one big advantage of the cloud version. Instead of using an independent Eclipse-based process development tool, we moved to web-based process and design. The web-based tool definitely had greater performance than the Eclipse-based tool. I never got onto another project after that with 50 people, so I don't know how the performance is when you get a large team on it, but it definitely seems that the cloud design tool was a massive improvement."
"All our clients are changing to microservice and cloud service. However, BPM does not have a solution for microservice and cloud service."
"One of the things that we are looking at is cognitive learning. IBM has another product called IBM RPA, I think, which is doing some of that stuff. We would like to see more of that with respect to cognitive learning and AI put back into the process engine to help."
"If the processing gets better, it would be more efficient."
"The front end is not customised for a good user experience."
"They don't have a mechanism to achieve processes, data sources, and data."
"The default Workspace does not meet all our needs and sometimes you need to create your own custom Workspace."
"The solution's licensing cost is very high."
"Oracle BPM is hard to configure."
"The product must reduce its cost."
"It would be good if they could provide some additional connectors or an application developer environment for microservices."
"Oracle BPM should allow integration with external, common APIs."
"Every time we roll out a new version of processes, we have to migrate to a new process. The process of this migration was not very smooth. We later decided that it would be easier for us to stop all processes, deploy a new version and then restart."
"Existing APIs in the product need to be fine-tuned, made more robust and flexible for adoption."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The pricing is very high."
"Price wise, IBM BPM is cheaper than other similar solutions and has excellent pricing."
"The price is good but could be a little lower."
"I rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten."
"The solution is highly-priced."
"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."
"The price of the solution is fair for an enterprise solution that has both cloud and on-premise deployments and when comparing to competitors. Recently IBM has introduced Cloud Pak which allows for more flexible licensing options for automation and other features."
"The product is expensive considering the hardware and software costs."
"Oracle is good, but they're still expensive compared to other vendors."
"It's pried high, this solution is expensive."
"We received the product packaged into the Oracle database solution."
"The licensing for this product is very costly. We pay for a yearly license to use Oracle BPM."
"As with all Oracle products, the licensing over VMware is an issue."
"The pricing is significantly high, particularly for Brazil where fluctuations in the exchange rate between the dollar and the real can further increase the cost of Oracle licenses."
"I don't have information on the exact cost of Oracle BPM because a different team handles that, but it's pretty high. Oracle products are very costly. I would rate pricing for Oracle BPM three out of five. Though the pricing is high, the solution has a lot of features."
"The licensing model is good."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
17%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Government
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 do you like most about Oracle BPM?
The solution provides extensive functionalities.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Oracle BPM?
The licensing is expensive. It needs to be more affordable, especially in the Kenyan market.
What needs improvement with Oracle BPM?
Oracle BPM should ensure its product is aligned with current technology by keeping up with advancements like AI. There are delays in offering the latest technology, so there is a need to be more re...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
Oracle Business Process Management
 

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
State Revenue Office Victoria, New South Wales Health, REDISA, Panduit, Total E&P Indonesie
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. Oracle BPM and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
838,640 professionals have used our research since 2012.