Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

IBM BPM vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix 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)
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (6th), Process Automation (6th)
TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
29th
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of October 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 5.9%, down from 7.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is 0.7%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM) Market Share Distribution
ProductMarket Share (%)
IBM BPM5.9%
TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM0.7%
Other93.4%
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Ateeq Rehman - PeerSpot reviewer
Automation platforms streamline processes and offer flexibility, but AI integration and version upgrades pose challenges
In the technology world, there is always room for improvement. Technologies evolve day by day, especially with the emergence of artificial intelligence and generative AI models. Although IBM BPM is a substantial product, adopting and integrating new technologies quickly is not easy due to the migration and upgrade paths involved. Every time new versions are released, we face business and production challenges that make rapid adoption challenging. The main concern bothering me today regarding IBM BPM is the integration of AI components.
Ray Ochieng - PeerSpot reviewer
Powerful workflow definition enhances operational stability and efficiency
TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is powerful for defining workflows. It is low code, so you don't need a lot of coding, and tasks are just drag and drop. It is also very stable as we haven't had issues with it going down or encountering any operational issues for a long time. The stability and rich features in workflow definition make it a valuable tool.

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."
"IBM BPM and Automation Anywhere working together automate manual tasks with a reduction in FTEs, creating about a 30% reduction in FTEs by automating processes."
"Process Modelling, simulation and optimization, integration, UI components."
"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 is efficient in reducing costs."
"The case management and its integration with process design are good features."
"Responsive Portal + Process Federation Server. This set of solutions offers a unified worklist to our customers."
"It helps improve your process through continual measurement."
"For specific situations this can be a good solution and a simplified interface to work with."
"TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is powerful for defining workflows."
"The scheduling and the calendar are very useful."
"It is the best product because of its stability. ActiveMatrix 5.x is highly stable in production, and the downtime is very low. I have worked on a lot of service projects, and the engine is very stable, robust, and scalable. The development and change requests can be pushed quickly, and the mapper activity and SSLT kind of features are also good. It is easy to do changes, testing, and deployment. Its deployment is very easy, and we can automate a lot of scripts for our on-premises solution. I work for an investment bank, and we have automated a lot of processes for our customers. Previously, we used to develop scripts and tools. With version 6.x, everything is moved to Maven and other things. Environment handling is done mostly through DevOps tools. As compared to Mulesoft, the deployment and configuration are very easy in TIBCO."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"The capacity for distributing the jobs in a workflow is an important feature."
"TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is powerful for defining workflows."
 

Cons

"I would like it more documentation during the design phase."
"Although IBM BPM is a substantial product, adopting and integrating new technologies quickly is not easy due to the migration and upgrade paths involved."
"The product is extremely complex to use and administrate."
"We would like better performance and more ​visibility on each step of the tool.​"
"The interface is limited and should improve in the future."
"The price and the overall installation process could be improved."
"The user experience, while it has improved, should continue to improve."
"Needs better reporting. I do not think that we are fully taking advantage of what it already has yet."
"ActiveMatrix is in the middle field. MuleDB is more on the engineering side with Java and other things. SnapLogic is there are on the higher side with very low coding. TIBCO stays in the middle like IBM or Oracle. TIBCO can move towards IBM's way of doing. IBM has a big market and many varieties of products and good integration, which TIBCO doesn't have. It can have better integration. TIBCO's transition to the cloud is a little slow. As compared to Dell, Boomi, and Mulesoft. TIBCO took the steps a little later. TIBCO's ID was far better and easier to work with previously. TIBCO's 5.x ID was very good, and the development environment and the transition were easy. Version 6.5 onwards, it is a stable product, but it would be good if they can do something similar to version 5.4 with version 6. They should concentrate on this API market. It will give them the strength and the ability to grab the market back."
"Technical support needs to be streamlined."
"The scalability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"My experience with tech support has not been very good. Most of the time, issues are escalated to level three, where they are either unresolved or take two weeks to address."
"The maintenance of the package could be improved."
"The product is missing some means of addressing more complex BPM constructs and should interface with more platforms easily."
"It is not lightweight and requires a lot of disk space, memory, and CPU."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It gives us a good return on investment."
"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."
"I rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven out of ten."
"​We have definitely seen ROI. When we first kicked it off, we said it had to pay for itself within three years, and it did."
"IBM BPM is expensive, so most large companies opt for IBM based on their licensing options."
"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."
"Our customers do see ROI. They'll identify some particularly painful or uncoordinated processes to start with, then build out from there, picking off low hanging fruit."
"There are some discussions about perpetual licenses and conversions, but I'm not much familiar with them."
"TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is an expensive tool compared to others."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Business Process Management (BPM) solutions are best for your needs.
871,469 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business30
Midsize Enterprise19
Large Enterprise71
By reviewers
Company SizeCount
Small Business1
Midsize Enterprise1
Large Enterprise5
 

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 TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM?
The product's initial setup phase is straightforward.
What needs improvement with TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM?
It is not lightweight and requires a lot of disk space, memory, and CPU. Making it lightweight so it can run on a minimum processor and less memory would be beneficial. Additionally, the current wo...
What is your primary use case for TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM?
We are using TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM for network deployment workflows. For example, if a customer is interested in getting a NetWorker, there is a workflow where we log in, get the customer details,...
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
No data available
 

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
ADIS, Citi, Bank of Montreal, First Citizens Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM and other solutions. Updated: September 2025.
871,469 professionals have used our research since 2012.