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IBM BPM vs vCenter Orchestrator comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 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 Process Automation
4th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (5th), Application Infrastructure (8th)
vCenter Orchestrator
Ranking in Process Automation
10th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 7.2%, down from 10.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vCenter Orchestrator is 0.2%, down from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation
 

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.
David Villota - PeerSpot reviewer
Provides automatic monitoring capabilities that save time for users
In my company's IT environment, we use the tool to deploy production environments for products, including live manufacturing systems. The product improves my company's IT automation processes since we can use fewer resources currently. In my company, we need to spend less time considering that vCenter Orchestrator monitors everything. In general, we don't have to be present in our company to do active monitoring. Automatic monitoring is available for everything with vCenter Orchestrator, so we have proactive alerts in our company. The most valuable feature of the product in streamlining our company's workflow stems from the fact that we need to spend fewer resources and less time in general. Our company can spend time on more effective tasks like working with the plans to improve processes and so on, instead of taking care of the systems. The benefits of the product's integration capabilities were useful for HPE. My company has HPE infrastructure, and we are keen to integrate everything into the host, VMware ESXi. It is really important to have an easy integration method that allows for everything to be installed easily in a matter of minutes. I was not involved in the product's setup process. My colleague took care of the product's setup process. From what I know, I can say that the product's setup phase was straightforward. Some custom setups were to be done manually in the tool, but everything was well documented. I recommend the product to those who plan to use it. One of the benefits of the product is that it is a low-cost and stable solution that offers a lot of resources. I rate the overall tool a nine 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

"The designer feature, compared to other solutions is easy to use."
"For me, the most important feature is the easy-to-use business process dashboard. It's simple to orchestrate business processes, and the interface is clean and intuitive. Once your workflow is designed on paper, it's easy for the business process manager to implement and follow it. Another IBM product that was good in the past is the IBM Case Manager. I haven't used it for three or four years, so I'm unsure if it's still available, but it was quite effective."
"Provides the power to understand and automate processes."
"Technical support is good. They are very responsive. It is usually me who takes more time to get back to them than they take to get back to me, which is good."
"It has reduced a lot of manual errors and processes."
"This solution has streamlined our operation and improved the TAT of sales, operations, and underwriters."
"Integration is a big plus for me."
"Responsive Portal + Process Federation Server. This set of solutions offers a unified worklist to our customers."
"We can scale the solution."
"Because of the central management, the scripting engine and workflow engine are integrated with VMware without any burden to integrate different products."
"It is very stable. I have been using vCenter Orchestrator from version three now to six plus."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is the workflow creation."
"What I like best about vCenter Orchestrator is that it makes life easier through automation. People can request to automate all processes with vCenter Orchestrator, such as adding storage, creating VMs, removing VMs, and extending VMs."
"The most valuable feature is that this solution is complete, and you don't need any add-ons."
"The open, flexible architecture has brought in the agile computing environment along with better Dr capabilities. Automation management and operational tasks across VMware and third-party applications, like our HMIS and other business productivity applications, have delivered peace of mind."
"Technical support is helpful."
 

Cons

"The debugging needs improvement. There is some confusion surrounding the debugging."
"We thought there might have been a little more discussion early on about, "Hey, if you're doing this, set it up this way," or some best practices or some guidance that we didn't get."
"The price and the overall installation process could be improved."
"The front end is not customised for a good user experience."
"We would appreciate more user-friendly definitions of processes with a more user-friendly interface for documenting processes."
"New users will need at least six months to get comfortable with IBM BPM, at least initially. So, there's a learning curve."
"There is a lot of room for improvement of the dashboards."
"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 believe a transparent view and better terms of condition between Oracle and vCenter Orchestrator would be helpful."
"We would like more flexibility in sizing data storage and virtual machines, as the current options aren't very adaptable."
"As we work towards more stability on the solution, sometimes we'll try something and it breaks and it's easier to restart the service. That's the only drawback. We've experienced this with other applications as well."
"The licensing is expensive and should be improved."
"There can be compatibility issues."
"The interface could be improved to bring greater user-friendliness and ease of use."
"Many times, customers' licenses are not used because the client is not aware of the features and the product benefits. When somebody is buying a product, they just do a default configuration."
"A feature to review and setup tasks should be added."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive considering the hardware and software costs."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a ten."
"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."
"Due to its extensive features and capabilities, the product pricing is more aligned with medium—to large enterprises."
"​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."
"The solution is highly-priced."
"The solution might be expensive, but I can't give you a precise number. In the market here, I've seen two main products for BPM: IBM BPM and Camunda. Camunda is very popular and open-source, so there's no direct comparison."
"The pricing is quite high, I would rate it two out of five."
"The product is expensive."
"The licensing module is somewhat complex. Calculating the cost is complicated. Many of our clients are unclear about the billing system and the traffic metering."
"This solution is expensive and the licensing is more attractive for Haveri."
"My organization didn't have to pay extra for vCenter Orchestrator. It was already included, so it's basically free. Even VMware regular support is included."
"The concept of hyper-convergence is smart. I don't know if it can be applied with less cost to be more affordable for small or medium-sized companies. The cost is a very important factor for it. We are currently depending on SAN storage. However, the hyper-converged solutions are depending on the storage within the hosts, such as vSAN in the VMware. It is a smart solution."
"vCenter Orchestrator is a very expensive solution."
"vCenter Orchestrator could be more affordable."
"The licensing cost is manageable because they have different versions available, standard, essential, and advanced."
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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
23%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Government
12%
Manufacturing Company
6%
 

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 vCenter Orchestrator?
The stability of the product is very good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Orchestrator?
We're running a low-profile budget. This is not our main focus on investment technology, so we're trying to reduce costs due to the change from perpetual to subscription licenses.
What needs improvement with vCenter Orchestrator?
After the change from perpetual licensing to subscriptions, the cost model changed. We are considering alternatives since we lost the perpetual aspect, and support is changing.
 

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
Beiersdorf Shared Services
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. vCenter Orchestrator and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
849,190 professionals have used our research since 2012.