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IBM BPM vs SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

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 Application Infrastructure
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (4th), Process Automation (5th)
SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Po...
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
20th
Average Rating
8.0
Number of Reviews
3
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of February 2025, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 2.8%, down from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal is 1.1%, down from 1.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure
 

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.
Anand_Kumar - PeerSpot reviewer
The UI makes the setup easy to do from anywhere
Our customers expect that a page will open within one second, and I doubt this will happen. Also, opening documentation takes time. Fixing this will help the customer and help to meet their expectations. SAP needs to come up with a standardized version of NetWeaver. The solution is good on the internal side, but not so much from the client perspective when they view it.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The solution is stable."
"With the tester coach wherein you can interact with the interface while you're designing the process."
"Scalability is good. In the time that I have been there, we have added more JVMs to help with the increased workload, so it does scale."
"Enabled us to convert most of the paper-based work into an automated workflow process, and some of them were converted into straight-through processing, with no human interaction involved whatsoever."
"Its Analytics is the most valuable feature."
"Integration is a big plus for me."
"The functionality to design UI to be responsive and can run on multiple devices."
"The integration and design are valuable features."
"Internal workflow approval around ESS and MSS leave days, capex approval as well as internal communication to the business have improved the way my organization functions."
"They integrated it with the SAP router."
"From the use of this solution, we have been able to establish better processes and have greater management of our company."
"Workflow functionality and internal portal capabilities are the most important features."
 

Cons

"Needs better reporting. I do not think that we are fully taking advantage of what it already has yet."
"We had hoped that the product would provide us with plug-ins like Salesforce. Its development environment needs to improve. We expect to see elastic features like containerization. We don't just need an on-prem virtual machine."
"Process versioning was tricky, not straightforward."
"Some of the features are not enough for my business. We need to build custom user management for the many end users affected by BPM."
"It is not user-friendly."
"IBM BPM lacks openness, that is, the ability to become open for new options in terms of APIs, front-end development, and ecosystem. IBM BPM has been quite closed. One of the main improvements would be to somehow embed the rules engine into IBM BPM. Merging IBM BRMS and the rules engine with IBM BPM would be helpful. If there was some simpler way to define rules without having to put IBM BRMS on top of it, it would be good. It's something that we can get out of Camunda but not out of IBM BPM."
"Where it can be improved is Integration. I think that the direction that IBM is taking now, to have something that is much more integrated, that can be seen as one single solution, is clearly the right way."
"​The initial setup was complex. It is not always easy to launch a new platform and it needed better coordination with IBM."
"The user interface could be improved by making it more user-friendly."
"External portal functionality with suppliers and customers needs improvement."
"Our customers expect that a page will open within one second, and I doubt this will happen. Also, opening documentation takes time. Fixing this will help the customer and help to meet their expectations."
"Due to our business, some setups were very complex."
"We encountered stability issues, especially on external functionality around its RFP capabilities."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"It should provide more flexibility to connect with external systems, and there should be in-built services that can be used to integrate with other systems quickly."
"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."
"Starting out with Express can also help reduce the cost for adopting the product."
"It gives us a good return on investment."
"The pricing is very high."
"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."
"Because India is so competitive in the IT world, people will start to move away from SAP's pricing because they have a market monopoly. Soon, they will start losing the monopoly part to open source and other things. I don't think their monopoly will run for more than three to four years because people are getting away from these monopolies."
"The cost of this solution is high."
"​SAP is not for every business. It depends on what is required. SAP is always going to be expensive​."
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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
22%
Government
10%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Financial Services Firm
8%
 

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.
Ask a question
Earn 20 points
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
NetWeaver Enterprise Portal, SAP Portal
 

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
Alliander N.V.
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. SAP NetWeaver Enterprise Portal and other solutions. Updated: January 2025.
837,501 professionals have used our research since 2012.