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IBM BPM vs Oracle SOA Suite comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM BPM
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.4
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (8th), Process Automation (5th)
Oracle SOA Suite
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.3
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
SOA Governance (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 3.0%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle SOA Suite is 4.0%, down from 4.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

Mohammed Almalki - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good case management and its integration with process design but there's a learning curve
If you're already an IBM shop with the necessary skills and personnel, then I would recommend using it. However, it requires a yearly investment. So, if you're prepared for that, then go for it. New users will need at least six months to get comfortable with IBM BPM, at least initially. So, there's a learning curve. Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. Two main reasons: the skillset required to manage it and its integration complexity.
Manoj Satpathy - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides good performance and error handling, but its initial setup is complex and could be improved
We use Oracle SOA Suite for application integration in our company. We were using the on-premises version of the product. Since Oracle SOA Suite has its own engine, you can build your integrations, deploy, and use them. We used the Oracle BPEL Process Manager for Orchestration when we had a lot of business logic. Oracle Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) and Oracle VPN come under the Oracle SOA integration platform. Compared to other solutions like SnapLogic, Oracle SOA Suite is not easy to use. Oracle SOA Suite is suitable for customers with a big complex integration process, where performance and infrastructure stability are more important. Overall, I rate the solution a seven 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

"With the tester coach wherein you can interact with the interface while you're designing the process."
"The solution is stable."
"The platform's most valuable features are its process automation capabilities and its ability to provide a comprehensive view of business operations."
"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."
"There is information during the process that the analyst will look at, their procedures. We created a part of the application such that the business can change those procedures as needed, on a daily, weekly, monthly basis. As the reps go through the process, they don't necessarily know it's changing, they just know they have to refer to some documentation, and the business can keep that up to date."
"The most valuable feature for the organization is the Document Store."
"I think the best way it can be it improved, is to make it easier to install. It's a very complicated piece of software, and there are a lot of things you have to do to get it set up. It's not just running an installer. You install WebSphere. You install the BPM product, and there's a large host of other steps you have to do: run queries against the database, you have to manually configure a bunch of properties files for your environment. I think if they could streamline all that, so it wasn't a considerable effort to install, that would be very useful. Because from an engineering point of view, you want to spend as little time as possible actually installing a product."
"Integration is a big plus for me."
"Enables our Product Manager to post products to different outside EC platforms with only one interface and one process."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the option to design, and the development can happen at the same time."
"In Oracle SOA Suite some applications are not able to use REST, but it can support both SOAP and REST. You're able to integrate quite a lot of systems, which may not be able to in other solutions. You can also use XML and JSON. It is a standardizing type of tool. It doesn't matter whether I'm using JSON or XML, it can convert them."
"I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy."
"The product provides transparency in finances."
"The integration with various products."
"We were able to scale out using multiple application and web servers balanced by hardware load balancers and Weblogic clustering."
"The most valuable feature of Oracle SOA Suite is all the platform's capabilities."
 

Cons

"The coaches and the user interface are the areas that can be improved a lot. It is good in terms of data processing, but the UI, scripting, and coaches are not very user-friendly and developer-friendly. Performance is always an issue. The scripting and the pattern that it uses are very tedious for new developers to understand, and it takes time to master it in depth. When comparing IBM BPM with IBM APN, a lot of things are provided out of the box in IBM APN. We don't have to write code or a Java connector to make a functionality work. It would be very helpful and time-saving for developers if IBM BPM is improved in this area to provide many functionalities or drag-and-drop options so that the developers don't have to write the code."
"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."
"I have an interest around the robotic piece, and integrating that with the processes. I think that is certainly a good direction to be going."
"I would like it more documentation during the design phase."
"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.​"
"The user experience, while it has improved, should continue to improve."
"The stability varies because it involves a lot of other components like databases, so sometimes if something goes wrong there, it can't recover from the fatal errors."
"The initial setup process is complex for basic users."
"SOA, OSB, SOA Cloud Service."
"The deployment could be made easier by including add-ons like Hudson and Maven."
"One area that could be better is the human task feature. It could be improved to provide more functionality and customization options because it has limited options available."
"An area for improvement in Oracle SOA Suite is the cost. It could be lower."
"SOA"
"If the disk space expansion can be made more flexible, not requiring a database restart, it would be a major benefit."
"The solutions can improve the communication or translations between formats, such as JSON and XML. The JSON REST API could improve."
"Decrease the number of internal resources which the product uses."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I rate the tool's pricing a seven out of ten."
"It has a low cost to implement. You'll get your money back in the same year that you complete the project."
"Licensing is managed by the client, but we know it is yearly. Camunda is relatively cheaper. There is not much difference in pricing of IBM and PEGA. For large licensing, there are discounts as well."
"It's expensive. All software is always extremely high. The manufacturing cost that we have compared to the selling cost, it's not like you're building a house or building a car. But putting that aside, considering that it's expensive, it's a lot of money. If you compare it with some of the other alternatives in the market, it's a similar price. For instance, if you compare it with Pegasystems, it's a similar price."
"I give the pricing an eight out of ten."
"Starting out with Express can also help reduce the cost for adopting the product."
"The solution is expensive since it is an enterprise application."
"I wish it was less expensive. I don't know why their pricing model is so high for a piece of software that could benefit so many. It just seems to me that they could have a lower cost, maybe with fewer features or whatever, but it should be possible to do a lower cost workflow software that uses the same interface and underlying engine but does not cost so much that you have to be a Fortune 50 company to buy it. It is annoying to me. There are a lot of solutions that IBM has that are really powerful but nobody can afford them. They know their business, but I still feel that there are a lot of customers who would benefit from this sort of thing. I don't know what this elitism is all about. I am sure they have people doing the money numbers, but it seems like you can make a lot more money by selling it to way more people for a little bit less."
"Oracle SOA Suite is an expensive solution."
"The pricing is not very high as compared to its competitors."
"It is necessary to evaluate the requirement regarding the platform usage and what the main operation area of the platform will be."
"The product is moderately priced."
"Based on my knowledge, Oracle SOA Suite doesn't have user-based licensing. It has a system-based licensing model, so you pay for whole systems. Oracle SOA Suite is an expensive solution, so it's a four out of ten for me."
"Oracle pricing is expensive. Support is based on your license. AWS is much better than Oracle in this regard."
"This product is WebLogic based, hence it can be both resource hungry as well as expensive from a licensing point of view."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
19%
Financial Services Firm
10%
Government
9%
Educational Organization
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 do you like most about Oracle SOA Suite?
The solution's XSLT or XSL Transformation feature was very useful.
What needs improvement with Oracle SOA Suite?
The solution’s initial setup is complex and could be improved. A big challenge for Oracle SOA Suite is that you don't get too many technical resources.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
SOA Suite
 

Learn More

 

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
7-Eleven, Arcor SAIC, Banca Transilvania, Eaton Corporation, Emdeon, Ferrovial, Griffith University, National Instruments, Pella Corporation, Vodafone Group Plc,
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. Oracle SOA Suite and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
816,406 professionals have used our research since 2012.