Private power for BPM

Yesterday I had the pleasure of having lunch with Jan Baan, a serial achiever in the IT industry and currently Executive Chairman and CEO of Cordys, a BPM vendor. I went to the meeting wondering whether the BPM space really needs another player - my personal view is that the market is still immature in demand terms, but there are a number of well-established vendors already.

However, as a private company with a rich backer, Cordys benefits from something that public companies can often only dream about - the freedom (time and money) to do what needs to be done to deliver a 'Version 2' offering. Most public companies build a version 1 that most of us would call a version 0 (or even -1!). The pressure is on to justify the investment by delivering returns quickly. Even a VC-backed private company suffers the same problems, with anxious investors looking for assurance that their money is working for them.

But as Jan explained to me, he has been happy to bankroll Cordys with a desire to build a solution that addresses the real-world operational issues that many Version 1s ignore. As a result, Cordys tells an impressive story on subjects like performance, fault tolerance, scalability and usability. Perhaps BPM is about to benefit from a dose of Private Power.

Steve