IBM Cloud Pak for Automation Reviews

There are multiple use cases but one notable aspect of IBM Cloud Pak for Automation is its licensing structure. They have consolidated all the products into one pack. Once you acquire the license, you can use each component based on your specific requirements. For instance, if you need to develop a solution, like an approval process for leave requests, the pack allows you to handle various aspects. 

You can connect to integration layers, design workflows, obtain user approvals, and initiate RPA services. There are numerous use cases, such as tracking requests related to DevOps configurations. You can assign requests to multiple teams, monitor milestones, and ensure compliance with SLAs. IBM Cloud Pak for Automation facilitates tracking process performance and meeting specified timeframes.

I believe two significant features of IBM Cloud Pak for Automation are the focus on SLA management and the capability to handle parallel instances effectively. Parallel instances, for instance, are valuable when dealing with a large number of users, enabling tasks to be performed concurrently for efficient system operation. The SLA aspect is crucial for tracking and ensuring the timely completion of tasks. Additionally, the cloud compatibility of IBM BAW allows for seamless migration from on-premises to the cloud. This version also includes a business rule management system for storing and managing business rules effectively. 

I believe there is room for improvement in the user interface, particularly in the Process Portal that customers use to view and manage their tasks. The UI of the Process Portal needs enhancement. 

Additionally, in the next release, I would like to see improved compatibility with Angular, allowing for direct integration with front-end systems. It would be beneficial to have built-in GUI features based on Angular within the system, rather than developing separate applications externally. This, in turn, would provide a more seamless and enhanced front-end experience.

About a year and a half ago, they launched small packs where products are combined, and licenses are sold based on these packs. For example, one pack includes three products: BPM, RPA, and others. I am currently working on the IBM Cloud Pak for Automation, which has integration bars and various products. I've been involved with this for approximately three years.

Currently, I haven't encountered any issues in terms of scalability, so I would rate it around 8 out of 10.

What are your impressions of the stability of this solution?

It is a stable solution and I would rate it 9 out of 10.

I believe there is room for improvement, particularly in the response time and the capability of the support team. During instances of issues, while support was available, the overall caliber did not meet expectations.

I find it quite straightforward, perhaps around 8.5 out of 10 in terms of ease. When we upgraded from the old version of IBM BPM to the new one within IBM Cloud Pak for Automation, we didn't encounter any major issues. There were some minor ones, but they were easy to overcome.The migration process was part of our deployment strategy. We had a plan to migrate two processes per week from on-premises to the cloud. The migration involved taking the instances and migrating them to the new environment. There is an inbuilt feature in IBM Cloud Pak for Automation that facilitates the migration process, although I personally haven't conducted it myself; it's managed by my team. Overall, the setup process was relatively smooth.

IBM Cloud Pak for Automation is relatively expensive, especially considering it is designed for long-living processes, not for normal automation needs. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the pricing at around 9.

There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees, but IBM has multiple pricing models that make it expensive in its own way. Different plans are available, but overall, the experience suggests it is a costly solution.

It's a good solution, but it took around nine months for implementation. It's highly effective if you have the budget and a long-term plan for sustained use. The stability is commendable, and once developed on the cloud, it tends to work seamlessly without issues. Overall, I would rate it a nine out of ten.

We got into the migration because CP4BA is an upgraded platform that has FileNet, Datacap, and ODM. It has all of the workflow content management and automation. Applications that used to work independently now work on a new integrated cloud-based containerized platform. We have been working on implementing that probably for the last year.

Our use cases are related to end-to-end workflow content. For example, in group life health, we process the claims, and we use the content and workflow engines to be able to build in some auto-adjudication rules. They have a decision manager application. 

What we're looking to achieve is upgraded capabilities when it comes to cloud-enabling our infrastructure to be able to do end-to-end workflow, also including the end customer. So, by using the access and identity management components of the platform, we will be able to build portals and send secured email links out to the customer to improve our ability to digitally process claims and workflows.

We are upgrading existing applications and developing the capacity to leverage the low-code, no-code features of the platform so that we get more of an agile development cadence going with business analysts, systems analysts, developers, and architects. Once we get the platform in a steady state, there are a number of features that we would like to use that we currently can't use, such as having secured email or having a workflow that also includes digitally posting the information in a portal. We would have more tools in our tool set and we won't have to just use Salesforce and all of those licensing implications.

What this product allows us to do is to move from on-prem instances where we are running independent instances of FileNet, Datacap, and ODM. It allows us to leverage container-based resiliency and availability modeling so that we have some visibility across the CP4BA ecosystem. We're now migrating all of our data to be in the Cloud Object Storage, and we can now use some of the features of Azure in terms of how we store and retrieve content for our members and our providers.

One of the challenges we're having is finding vendors who have experience in developing on the cloud. We can find developers on the old platform, but it is leading-edge technology. So, we are having some challenges, and IBM is assisting us to find vendor partners. To be able to leverage all the capabilities of the new platform, we have to upgrade our existing ecosystem of FileNet applications. Upgrading to the new platform while trying to modernize is always challenging because it is like you have a moving target.

The stability seems to be good. We're getting a lot of support from IBM directly. They are always open to assisting us with any defects, and they've had to navigate across some issues with Microsoft and licensing. They've been very good at that support side of things. We're working with them now to get a statement of work set up so that we can get the finalization settled because we don't have a stable environment right now for the platform.

It is scalable. We know that we want to be able to create shared services, and it certainly has that capacity with the containers. With how we set up the instances and how we set up the object storage, it is a very scalable platform. We just need to learn the tools and the techniques, and we need those subject matter experts. When you're dealing with newer technology, it is harder to find them. That's why we've had to go back to IBM. 

We use it as common document storage. We're using FileNet, and we're storing content for up to a million and a half users, but not all of those will be users. We haven't extended it to all the users yet. Internally we use it, but we haven't gone outside of our own. We haven't used it yet to interface with clients. We're working on that.

They've been very good.

We have been using FileNet for years in our content and workflow. They sold this as an upgrade because our FileNet version was going off support. At that point, we decided to go with the Cloud Container environment.

It is complex for us because it is the first time that we're setting up a full ecosystem in the cloud. We had to migrate our DB2 on-prem to be DB2 on Linux, and then we had to migrate our on-prem object storage to Azure because that's our private cloud provider. 

We also had to understand the intricacies of how you leverage the container because it is on Red Hat OpenShift containers. There is additional complexity because there is another level of orchestration that you get into with Red Hat. That was challenging for us because we didn't have a lot of resources that understood how to leverage all those features of the Red Hat OpenShift Container, and then you still have to be able to absorb the changes in the CP4BA platform because it is now using cloud-based architecture. We had a few underlying systems in our FileNet instances that were not covered by the container. That caused us a little bit of angst in some of our disability applications.

Any time you take on a large upgrade project, it is always more complicated than you think because your applications aren't necessarily stopping. They have modernization going on all the time. To have your environment ready to upgrade, you have to stop certain things, and that's challenging.

We didn't have enough subject matter experts to be able to guide the installation in the way that we should've. Now, we're circling back. IBM is providing an expert team at a cost, and we're trying to get better governance in place to finalize the installation.

In terms of maintenance, currently, it is still under warranty. We're building out that support team. We may end up using services from IBM. We're in negotiations with them on how we're going to use them going forward.

Its cost is almost the same or comparable to what we pay with FileNet, but I'm not sure what we pay a year.

A good part of CP4BA is the CPU-based licensing model. When we're dealing with 50,000 dentists, for example, if we were to use Salesforce, we would be hit with the licensing of 50,000 dentists, whereas when we build out in CP4BA, it is just based on our CPU usage, not on individual licenses.

I would advise aligning with the vendor. Make sure that you have the proper vendor support because it is more complex than most people realize. When you have to think about setting up an entirely new cloud infrastructure, there are containers you have to worry about, which are like old-school middleware, then you have the platform itself, then you have the applications and the databases, and then the object storage. It is a big lift when you're migrating from on-prem to the cloud.

I'm hoping that we will get the scalability and the features out of this. We desperately need this to be able to extend our workflow. We have legacy backend systems. The only option we have to extend modernization is to implement automation across these workstreams so that we're slowly migrating work off the mainframe into more of a microservices environment and using CP4BA to do the automation, auto-adjudication, and auto-ingestion that we need.

At this point, I would rate it a seven out of ten.