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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)
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (8th), Process Automation (4th)
TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
32nd
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 March 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 7.4%, down from 7.5% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is 0.5%, down from 0.6% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

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.
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 functionality to design UI to be responsive and can run on multiple devices."
"Its workflow and integration with SAP are the most valuable features. It is also a stable solution."
"It is efficient in reducing costs."
"The Process Designer is good. We like how we can drag and drop and link the processes up, that works out great for us."
"Its most valuable features are usability and integration with other IBM products."
"It is easy to take a requirement, put it in the code, and deploy it."
"There are two or three valuable features, like BPM."
"Setting it up is fairly easy. If somebody has knowledge of the system, he or she will be able to do it fairly quickly."
"For specific situations this can be a good solution and a simplified interface to work with."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"The capacity for distributing the jobs in a workflow is an important feature."
"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."
"TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is powerful for defining workflows."
"TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is powerful for defining workflows."
"The scheduling and the calendar are very useful."
 

Cons

"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."
"IBM BPM's UI is an area with shortcomings where improvements are required."
"The solution has scalability issues; on a scale, I would rate it at eight out of ten."
"We care about technology and support because support is very important and a BPM is not easy to implement."
"Stability wavers. We have some opportunities for improvement in this space, especially as we approach our target volume of a million transactions a day. It is tough, because it is not necessarily the product. It is more around the platform and infrastructure to support it, so the connectivity to the database, web sessions, and reverse proxies in front of that."
"The business would like to use the product with a lot less IT and equipment involvement."
"Consider an admin console during deployment. I would like to migrate single instances, not the whole bunch at once."
"If the processing gets better, it would be more efficient."
"The maintenance of the package could be improved."
"It is not lightweight and requires a lot of disk space, memory, and CPU."
"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."
"Technical support needs to be streamlined."
"The product is missing some means of addressing more complex BPM constructs and should interface with more platforms easily."
"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."
"The scalability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"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."
"IBM BPM cannot be considered a cheaply priced product. IBM BPM is a really expensive product compared to other companies. One needs to opt for the perpetual licensing model offered by IBM."
"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."
"When considering the features of the solution the price is expensive compared to competitors."
"I rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten."
"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."
"Starting out with Express can also help reduce the cost for adopting the product."
"I already compared some solutions related to business process management, and I saw that the cost of IBM BPM is more expensive compared with that of Camunda, for example."
"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."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
43%
Manufacturing Company
11%
Computer Software Company
8%
Energy/Utilities Company
8%
 

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 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,...
 

Comparisons

 

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: March 2025.
842,388 professionals have used our research since 2012.