IBM BPM Reviews

We're primarily using the solution for workflows, mostly. We are a telco-based company, however, most of our use cases are kind of in a workflow format. We're trying to workflow things across other systems.

The installation was straightforward.

For us, we had the challenge whereby the training was not done properly through a sales partner. The BPM has a partner to deliver, and with our local partner, the training was not properly done, so we were not very comfortable. We never got to a comfort level with the product. We ended up not using it that much. There were missing modules within it. For example, the document management part was missing and we failed to integrate it into our SharePoint. In the end, there was no uptake for the processes that we had put in through it.

The solution as a whole should be simplified due to the fact that it has so many paths. It's difficult for a customer, when you are onboarding this system, to understand all the parts that you have to put together. 

What you buy depends on what you know about it. For example, if it's supposed to then have BlueX and a separate document management platform like FileNet, and a process server and a processing center, decision center, you kind of have to put these things together. And yet, you don't know them due to the fact that you are not an IBM expert. It's not like you can say, "Look, I want in a BPM solution." And then it just comes with everything together.

They should incorporate an API gateway functionality within it to simplify integrations. One of the key issues with IBM, BPM is the integration part. It is not very flexible with integration. For an automation platform, you really need easy integration. If I am going into SharePoint, if I'm going into ERP, those are some of the key things that you have to integrate into. We were doing point-to-point integrations. Within the system, the API gateway and the integration management should be part of the solution.

I've probably been using the solution for two years at this point.

The stability was likely okay. For us, we had issues, however, I don't think it's the platform, which caused the problem. It was likely the expertise in terms of the actual deployment.

The company licensed at the PVU level and the scalability is a bit complex. You can't really tie it to the processes that you are putting in. You always have to monitor at a system or hardware level, the impact that you're putting on it - the more you customize and add things on it. It's a bit difficult to know when to scale up or down.

Originally, we wanted it to be used by at least 1,000 plus users, with the potential, depending on the process that you've put in, of more. We would've wanted to end up hosting process automation for processes to be used across 5,000 plus users, potentially. Unfortunately, we didn't get the adoption rate we were looking for.

Technical support was okay. We didn't really have any issues with their level of assistance.

We didn't previously use a different solution. It was mostly just acquired Shadow IT.

While the installation of the solution itself was straightforward, the customization wasn't straightforward for us. It was too complex, and the training we received did not help us understand the solution. We needed to be experts and we weren't.

We used a consultant to assist us with the process. We did not handle the entire process in-house.

The licensing is a bit expensive for a main process automation platform. Maybe it's because of our background, however, we found it to be a bit pricey.

We were just end-users and customers of IBM.

It's hard to rate the solution as we didn't really get to use it. I would likely rate it at a seven out of ten - if it was installed correctly.

If I learned anything from the experience, it's the importance of proper training. A company really should get proper IBM training to understand the product first, before committing to purchasing and implementing it.

It provides a very robust environment to build an integration framework or workflow patterns that we have. A lot of changes or modifications have been made to this solution over the past few years. The features that they have added this time have helped developers like us to work on the developmental environment and leverage all the capabilities of the tool. This is what I like about this solution.

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.

I have been using this solution for eight years. I have been involved with this tool since the beginning. It was called Lombardi before it was taken over by IBM. I've seen how this solution has progressed in the last few years. 

I don't have much experience with their technical support.

It is straightforward.

I would recommend IBM BPM to others depending on the use case that they are planning to implement and the actual specification they are looking for. If they are focusing more on user interfaces, I would not recommend IBM BPM, but if they are focusing more on workflows, integration designs, and straightforward processing, IBM BPM would be a good choice.

I would rate IBM BPM a seven out of ten.

 It is perferct if you have to develop complex apps without much coding (only java script). It is also good if you don't have much IT resurces in your company and woudl like to involve business analysts in process of developing apps. My opinion is that no it stuff can do about 50% of all developers work.

If you have a company that doesn't like to have everything ready out of the box and likes the capability of customizing a solution, you'll probably have a problem with this solution. You will need to do customizations on process portal, on your BPM applications ...

If you want to use IBM BPM, you will have to invest a lot of money for licenses and you need to learn that there are limitations in developing applications. You cannot create anything you want. You need to follow all the rules that IBM BPM requires.

For example: you cannot implement modern programming techniques (OOP), microservise architecture. You have services, you have a graphical tool for creating solutions, however, you cannot use this part of the code in other apps freely if you don't use toolkits and it can be sometimes very tricky. 

There are some things that the solution needs to improve upon from a developer's perspective. Software developers that use the eclipse process designer in older versions of BPM have had issues. The eclipse process designer and web process designer are quite different. With a web process designer, they cannot use IntelliSense during the coding in JavaScript. They cannot use some functionalities that weere in previous versions.

From the client's perspective, there are problems with licensing. It is complex especially when you need to do upgrade from old to new version. You will  need to use VPC instead of PVU per core and it is confusing. 

In case we are talking about cloud pack for automation it is good idea and it shoud be the future of automation of business processes but it is not ready yet. There are some functionalities that are missing ( for exampe sql services).I epxect that it will be solved soon.

I've been using the solution for more than ten years. I started with the very old versions, with BPEL processes and then swich to BPMN.

The solution is extremely stable. IBM is a reliable product. There aren't issues with bugs or glitches. It doesn't crash or freeze.

The solution can scale well. It's already quite sizeable and it's designed for larger organizations.

We actually give technical support to our clients directly.

I do have some technical support experience with some of IBM's technical support team, especially in relation to the setup, installation, and upgrade. I needed their help during installation and the response was okay. I'd say that I am satisfied with the level of support.

I am using also Camunda. It is an open-source BPM and I can make a parallel between these two tools. Therefore, if you want to create new apps and you have experiance software developers and have resources, and you don't wish to pay licences then it will be better for you to create a business process apps using open-source.  If you woudl like to create your services and your UI in some external tools, like Java. .NET, Angular, .. it is possible in camunda and it is not easy to achive in IBM BPM. On other hand if you don't have IT resources and you woud like to create apps faster then use IBM BPM.

The solution is complex to set up. However, you expect this going in. It is a huge application. It is running on a WebSphere Application Server. The WebSphere Application Server is an application server, and therefore, you need to set up this application server first and then to set up the BPM solution. After that, you need to create profiles and so on. There are multiple and sizable parts to the implementation that have some very problematic steps. On top of that, if some error is happening with these steps, we will have a problem. 

On the other hand, you really have a huge and powerful tool at the end. Therefore, you cannot expect the tool will have a simple setup or simple installation and to have all this functionality that you get with IBM BPM, especially with IBM Business Automation Workflow that you ultimately have.

Basically, for first installation and customization of one small dev, test and prod environment  you will not need more than a week.

If you have old version of BPM and olready finished some appps, and you need to upgrade it, then it is a bit more complex, due to the fact that you will probably have problems with the application if these applications are developed in an older version of BPM. Instead of only upgrading software, you will need to convert the application and sometimes it could need some time.

IBM BPM is not for every company. This is a solution is for a company that has at least 500 people and more employees. I don't expect a company with only 100 people to invest a half-million dollars into the licensing and the same in the services. A company like that should look into other open-source options.

We're just customers. We are not partners. We don't have any business relationship with IBM.

I started with the very old versions, with only BPEL processes. It was also BPM, however, I was using BPEL processes

Right now, for the latest client, we are using the business automation workflow 19.0.0.3.

Our clients are mostly in the banking industry, and therefore we don't really deal with the cloud versions.

IBM is preparing some new tools specific only for the banking industry and for the cloud. I don't much about it but I'm sure that it will be presented soon.

Basically, if you company is large, has problem with IT resources, need to rapidly change business processes and to fast create new apps IBM BPM will do your job.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten. They can still improve their software. They have some parts missing and I'm expecting that these parts will be upgraded in the future. It is not a full 10 now, as there are somethings that they need to improve on.

More than anything, we use IBM BPM to orchestrate processes. We don't have a culture of BPM, so we don't do process modeling and monitoring for improvement. Nonetheless, we get a benefit from the BPM.

Our developers have created some application views. I'm not sure if BPM is meant for application views, but they have done that to model and automate processes.

I am an architect and although I haven't worked with it directly, I am trying to help. The problem seems to be that we don't have the skill set to support it.

This product does the job in terms of executing the workflow. It might be overkill for what we are doing, but we use it to automate some of the backend processes or system processes.

Our developers are complaining that it's too complex to maintain. They are struggling to remodel or maintain existing interfaces and integration. 

I've been through the interfaces but the developers find it difficult to get into the code to maintain it, modify it, and customize it.

We have been using this product for more than 10 years.

We have been looking at implementing Signavio. It looks promising in terms of what we want to do, but we are not sure if it's the right direction to go in.

I would rate this solution a five out of ten.

We are consultants and integrators. We are also a partner of IBM. We implement IBM BPM in financial institutions for automatic support, process automation support, process digitalization, and process management. Our business cases are all around financial markets.

One of the reasons for adopting this solution ten years ago was its ease of use. It had a lot of off-the-shelf functionality, and it did not need to be developed specifically for the project that we were implementing. That was the main reason for adopting it in the beginning.

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.

I have been using IBM BPM for around ten years. 

It is quite resilient to failure. It's a good solution in this sense.

It is quite scalable.

For common day-by-day support, they are good. For things that are a little bit more complicated and require highly-skilled knowledge, it can become complex and difficult to obtain support.

The initial setup is complex. It takes several months, and it requires expertise from IBM technicians most of the time.

Its initial setup could be improved. If there was a way to set it up in two or three clicks or there was a way to create a space or cloud infrastructure that can be available in several clicks, it would be a product gain. It would be nice to have something available as platform-as-a-service (PaaS) in cloud infrastructure. I don't know whether this functionality is currently available because we have stopped investing in this technology. 

It requires consultants for deployment. 

I would rate it an eight out of ten. 

We evaluated this product for governmental processes automation trials. Although they didn't actually commit to production, in evaluating this product against others based on Microsoft technology like AuraPortal, I can say that this is definitely better in terms of capability. This is especially true in citizen developers. It also has multi-platform support including Linux and Unix, which can't be achieved with the .NET stack.

Integrating with other products is easy for a variety of set APIs.

The use case was in education and we were able to complete a POC within one week without expert knowledge.

This tool is very useful when it comes to enterprise-grade automation and governmental processes for the security aspects, performance, and reliability.

Evaluating the tool isn't a hard job for the cloud trial. We were able to do our trials on the tool in a very short time and received feedback from different teams within the organization.

Using the standard notations in the diagrams makes it a lot easier when sharing processes across business teams.

Generally, we recommend this tool for any enterprise-grade project.

Web Designer is a valuable feature that is better than the desktop version. The desktop version requires integrations between the workstation and the main engine, whereas, with Web Designer, all of the constraints have been removed. The user experience enables citizen developers and business users to design and review simple business processes. 

Importing and exporting between multiple environments is more difficult with other tools. This is a great feature for productivity.

IBM BPM is one of the leaders without question.

We would like to see this product cloud-native, as the market now is moving to both hybrid cloud and multi-cloud deployments. Being cloud-native helps in moving towards this strategy.

We would like to have more flexibility in distributing the workload across different data centers and different locations.

IBM BPM needs to be containerized and managed by K8s. IBM has a great chance in this, especially after the acquisition of RedHat. Making the BPM cloud-native will give great capabilities.

This is the improvement that should be made to all the current tools as Kubernetes is the defacto standard now.

We have been using IBM BPM for a few months.

We use IBM BPM for AC Kronos process management to use for calls and users. 

I like the APIs and the BPM Coach is a good tool. But if I had to pick one, it would be the API.

The push notifications are also good. 

The debugging needs improvement. There is some confusion surrounding the debugging.

They should also improve the APIs.

I have been using IBM BPM for four months. 

It is scalable. No bugs or glitches. 

We don't use it in the production systems right now. We're just using it in the pilot mode. 

Our teams work on scalability and I think it is good. It's based on IBM vSphere, and the scalability is good.

It's used by around 10,000 people and around 15 developers.

IBM's technical support is not enough. We don't get good responses from technical support.

The initial setup was straightforward. It's automatic, then you compress it.

It took us around one day to install it. 

My advice would be to use an open-source solution. It would be more valuable than IBM. Our company is based on IBM. IBM is good for our needs but I wouldn't recommend it for an old age company. An open-source product would be better. 

I would rate IBM BPM an eight out of ten. 

We use IBM BPM for process management for our users. With it, we don't need to load items under a sandbox using IBM BPM and it has a good general user experience with business processes.

IBM's APIs are very good. We use them often. I really like the API.

The IBM coaching tool gives us a lot of great benefits.

The solution offers great notifications.

The performance of the system is great. It's very reliable.

Finding errors and bugs in the system is not easy. We can't seem to use the events or logs to find them, so it makes it difficult to debug the system. They really need to work on their debugging features to make is much, much easier. It would improve the solution considerably and should be something they add in a future release.

The solution is pricey and time-consuming to manage.

Technical support needs to be much more helpful. 

It would be useful if IBM could hold calls to help companies with system learning so we could better wrap our arms around the product.

I've been using the solution for around two years at this point.

The solution is quite stable. We find that it doesn't crash and it's quite reliable.

I'm not sure I could speak to the scalability of the solution. I personally have never tried to scale it, so I'm not sure how it works.

My understanding is that our team is not well supported by technical support. Due to the fact that it's not very good, we need to rely on our own research and try to troubleshoot from our end.

Before IBM, we didn't use any other kind of business process management architecture. We chose IBM due to our existing architecture. Whether or not we used a different software that helped us complete similar tasks, I cannot say.

As I recall, the initial setup was pretty straightforward. We found it to be rather easy.

The solution is on the expensive side.

We're just customers; we don't have a business relationship with IBM.

We're not sure which version of the solution we're using is. It may be Version 10. 

We don't use IBM BPM for production. We are using IBM BPM in the pilot system instead of the production system. I've been using the pilot system for about one year.

I'd advise others considering business process management software to think about open source. The industry is moving in that direction, and it may be better for many companies.

If they have enough money and time, IBM is still a very good choice.

I'd rate the solution eight out of ten.