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Archive for the ‘BPM’ Category

So Progress Software has bought yet another software company; this time a BPM vendor, Savvion. But is this the right move for Progress?

Progress Software has spent most of its life growing through acquisition, making use of the piles of cash generated by its legacy mid-range database product to find new areas of growth. After all, the legacy business may be highly profitable, but its returms are dwindling by the year and Porgress desperately needs something else to shore up its balance sheet. Unfortunately its acquisitions have had a bit of a patchy record of success. Perhaps it will be different this time.

Savvion is a credible BPM (Business Process Management) software provider, and 2009 was a bumper year for BPM sales. Specialist companies like Pegasystems and Lombardi showed huge growth rates, bucking the downward trend triggered across many technology sectors by the economic upheaval. On top of this, Progress has been trying to establish itself as a viable SOA (Service Oriented Architecture) and business integration vendor ever since it launched the Sonic ESB in the early years of the last decade, and BPM was a glaring hole in its portfolio. For these reasons, it is easy to see why Savvion would seem a good fit.

There seem to be two problems for Progress, however. Firstly, BPM is now rarely a solution bought in its own right – hence the rapid consolidation of the BPM market with Pegasystems more or less the only major oure-play BPM left standing following IBM’s acquisition of Lombardi. Instead, BPM is deployed more and more as part of a business transformation strategy involving components such as SOA, application and data integration, business rules, business monitoring and business events management.  Secondly, the gorillas in the space are now IBM, Oracle and SAP. These companies all offer a full suite of products and more importantly services based around BPM and the rest of the modern infrastructure stack. Companies such as Software AG, TIBCO and Axway form a credible second tier, too.

In previous acquisitions, Progress has treated each acqusition as purely software products. This is not surprising, since selling databases is more about selling products than selling solutions. However, it is this factor that has been at the root of the patchy performance of Progress acquisitions. For instance, the Data Direct division of Progress, where it placed a number of acquisitions in the data space, has fared reasonably well. This is because it is more of a product business. However its attempts in areas such as ESBs and SOA governance have suffered due to a seeming reluctance to embrace a more industry-specific, services-based solution model.

With its acqusition of Savvion, Progress once again has the chance to try to show the market that it has learnt from its mistakes. BPM is absolutely an area where companies need to be offered solutions – products together with services and guidance to develop effective and affordable business solutions. It will be hard enough for Progress to cut a share of the BPM pie with all the big players involved, but it does have one outstanding advantage; it has a strong and accessible customer base in the mid-range market where the larger companies struggle. However, if it fails to take on board the need to hire industryvertical skills and solution-based field and service professionals then this acquisition could prove to be yet another lost opportunity.

Steve

IBM has agreed an acqusition of Lomardi, one of the few remaining pure-play BPM suppliers, with target of closing the deal in 2010.

 IBM has reaffirmed its position of strength in the burgeoning Business Process Management (BPM) space with this acquisition. Lombardi has three assets that IBM is particularly interested in; its human-centric BPM capabilities, its extensive professional services resources and its reputation and success with BPM at the departmental level.

For the uninitiated, business processes tend to span some or all of three distinct areas of usage – human-oriented processes, document-oriented processes and prorgram-oriented processes. Human processes involve such aspects as task lists that people use as they carry out their assigned tasks, document processes upgrade traditional paper-oriented models and program-based processes involve the dynamic interaction of applications. IBM has always been most experienced at dealing with program-to-program interaction, delivering its own WebSphere BPM offering. A few years ago it also acquired FileNet, a major player in document-based processing that had document-related BPM products. Now it is making the Lombardi acquisition to strengthen its human interaction BPM capabilities.

This is an exciting acquisition, closing out the weakest areas of IBM’s BPM solutions. However, the challenge for IBM will be to properly integrate the new product set with its existing BPM offerings. Frankly, IBM has not done a good job to date on this with its previous BPM acquisition of FileNet – IBM marketing collateral exhibits confusion over what are essentially two differnent product solutions that both claim to be BPM. Hopefully it will handle the Lombardi acquisition better.

Steve

Software AG seems to be defying predictions and surprising the market at every turn.

Once seen as a sleepy European software house based largely around legacy system technologies, it has taken major strides to transform itself into a major global software industry player. Its acquisition of webMethods a few years ago surprised the market, with many analysts unconvinced that it could make a go of the move into integration / SOA middleware, but it has done a fair job of building some momentum by tying the webMethods portfolio up with its own CentraSite governance technology, providing service-oriented architecture (SOA) with integrated governance.

Then it once again shocked the market by snatching IDS Scheer, the well-known supplier of modelling tools, from under SAP’s nose. Given that the IDS Scheer technology is used by most of the major SOA suppliers across the world for modelling, and in particular is a key part of the SAP portfolio, this would appear to give Software AG lots of cross-sell opportunities across the two customer bases and throughout the SAP world.

Now it has announced its 2Q09 results, and they make pretty good reading ont he surface. A 9% increase in product revenues is particularly noteworthy give that so many companies are struggling to show any year-on-year growth in product sales. However, before getting too carried away it is worth delving a little deeper into the numbers. The product revenue numbers include maintenance as well as license sales. Licensesales actually fell, as with most other companies. Maintenance revenues jumped by 20% – does this mean that the company has built a much larger maintenance base, or is it actually a reflection of a more aggressive pricing policy? Then there is the split between the legacy business (ETS) and the SOA/BPM business(webMethods). License revenues in this segment were down 15% – not very encouraging since this is the strategic business unit. Also, it is noticeable that maintenance revenue in each segment increased by about 20%, suggesting that this rise does indeed reflect a price hike.

However, taking all this into consideration, Software AG is still looking to have moved forward substantially from a few years ago, and assuming the IDS Scheer acquisition goes through OK there should be lots of opportunities for the company. Of course, a cynic might point out that by adding IDS Scheer to the webMethods portfolio, the company has made itself a highly attractive acquisition target to someone – perhaps SAP?!

Steve

There has been a lot of chatter recently about measuring SOA ROI – take a look at Loraine Lawson’s recent blog for instance.

or Gartner’s results of a UK-based survey of SOA adopters. However, one of the benefits that I think a lot of people miss, or do not attribute enough importance to at least, is Visibility.

Basically, the visibility story goes that with SOA, since you break up operational components into discrete business services, then it becomes easy to monitor entry and exit to these services and hence business operations flow. This gives a clear picture in business terms of execution and performance – not just what is happening, or how many times, but HOW business is being carried out.

Gartner did touch upon visibility,

Improved Efficiency in Business Processes Execution – Isolating the business logic from the functional application work enables a clearer view of what a process is, and the rules to which it adheres. This can be measured by lower process administrative costs, higher visibility on existing/running business processes, and reduced number of manual, paper-based steps; better service-level effectiveness; quicker implementation of process iterative or of variants of the same process for different contexts.

However, the Gartner focus was only on visibility as it relates to execution efficiency. In fact, SOA-based visibility offers another benefit which, in today’s tough times particularly, can be a real big hitter for executive management. It enables management to see how process are being executed – in other words, it provides the ideal tool to monitor compliance against a growing raft of regulatory requirements across just about every industry. In order to demonstrate that your systems comply, it is necessary to be able to see what they are doing and how they are doing it. This is what SOA delivers.

So how does improved compliance management fit into the ROI picture? True, it is very hard to attach a dollar amount to compliance – however it certainly matters. With the amount of public and political scrutiny of corporations today, it is absolutely imperative that executives can show they are faithfully adhering to regulations and guidelines. Failure to do so will not only risk severe penalties, but also probably lose them their jobs! Now THAT’s a compelling business case….

Steve

It’s always nice to be proved right. At the end of 2008, when Lustratus published its 2009 predictions for the infrastructure market, we highlighted BPM and predicted that 2009 would (at last) be its year.

In March I discussed the impressive 2008 for Pegasystemsin a previous Litebytes post, and now the company has made its 1Q09 announcement of earnings.

Briefly, we are talking about revenue increasing 29% YOY to $62.4M for the quarter, and license revenue up a storming 60% to $28M. Recession – what recession? Admittedly the results were skewed a little by a single large deal closing at around 12% of the total, which may put Pega under pressure for the next quarter, but this cannot disguise the point we made in our 2009 predictions - tactical, targeted BPM can deliver the real savings and flexibility to support broadening customer bases and types that businesses are looking for in the current economic downturn, or can respond to specific business channels such as tracking and reducing fraud.

The other point that these results reaffirm is that companies are looking for solutions that are geared to their own industry vertical needs – Pegasystems has a strong industry framework philosophy that responds to this need very effectively. The only possible ‘cloud’ on the horizon seems to be Peagsystems’ tentative move towards the dangerous ‘Platform-as-a-Service’ (PaaS) market segment – this area is a minefield at the moment and it is to be hoped that Pega do not find themselves sucked into the abyss by getting to wedded to this idea. Just stick to what you do best, guys!

In summary, for all those companies who have heard about BPM and then shied away, put off by the thought of the effort required to deployBPM across the enterprise for all processes, take another look with a tactical, laser-focused mind-set. BPM really can be selectively applied at a reasonable price, with rapid payback and an attractive ongoing benefit stream.

Steve

With the global downturn in full swing, there are a lot of concerns over how software markets will perfom.

However, one trend is emerging as a vital ingredient if software companies are to succeed, and those companies that have recognized it are already benefiting.

Software buyers in 2009 are finding an industry vertical specialization to be essential to support any investment justification. The problem for many users is that although the technologies and products available offer the same sorts of benefits as before, in order to get any purchase through the system it has become critical to have a strong business backing all the way. Nothing will move if a business sponsor is not pushing for it. Of course, investments have always had to be justified, and a business alignment is a key part of this process, but in the economic downturn this focus has moved from being part of the justification to being the overriding element. A business sponsor has to be brought on board right at the beginning if the particular project has any chance of success.

As a result, companies that do more than pay lip-service to describing business benefits are prospering. The software vendors that offer truly vertical solutions, tuned for particular industry needs and taken to market by field teams with the relevant industry domain knowledge, are the ones that are succeeding. One proof point is Pegasystems, who I blogged about a few days ago. Onereason that Pegasystems has maintained such strong growth in 2008 with its BPM offerings is a strong industry vertical sensitivity. 

Another excellent example is IBM and in particular its Information Management division. Information Management software is regarded as unsexy - although still important, it has tended to be neglected in the rush towards application-oriented strategies and initiatives. Enter a new IBM management team that has restructured the go-to-market approach for Information Management software to an industry-vertical one, generating models of particular industry challenges and processes, looking at the specific needs of these industries and carrying the industry-vertical business messages to prospective buyers. Whether serendipitous or the result of impressiveexecutive insight, this approach has almost exactly dovetailed with the software buyers’ needs for a more relevant, industry-related message in order to secure investment. The result is that IBM is claiming significant sales and successes in its information management software business segment, even in the current environment. 

Other software companies would do well to take note. If you want to sell software this year, you have to help your prospective buyers by going to market with clearly aligned business vertical offerings and messages.

Steve   

There is a lot of chatter in the blogosphere at the moment about whether SOA (service-oriented architecture) has run out of steam – whether companies have stopped investing in it, got disillusioned with it or cast it aside for the latest new thing.

For me, this is a silly discussion – SOA is about a way of doing things more sensibly, just as structured program was many years ago. It is really all about architecting system design around the concept of a pool of shared services, and cleaning up the linkages between different programs and applications.

So on this basis SOA is not dead, but an active and important architectural underpinning of a number of different initiatives, many of which have been rolled into the ‘SOA’ term – things like BPM (Business Process Management), SaaS (Software as a Service), Business events management, BAM (Business Activity Monitoring and many others. But has the failing world economy stopped the whole SOA family juggernaut in its tracks anyway?

The answer Lustratus picks up from its clients is a resounding NO. BPM in particular seems to be seen as a powerful way to respond to the needs of operating in an economic recession. Indeed, Lustratus pointed to BPM as a shining light in its forecasts for 2009. Validation of this claim is evident when looking at the performance of Pegasystems a major provider of BPM solutions and technologies. Pegasystems is an important indicator of BPM health because it is one of the few remaining pure-play business process software vendors left. In its recent annual results announcement earlier this month, it showed a revenue increase for 2008 of over 30% to over $200M, and importantly a 50% increase in new license revenue. It is in such good financial shape that it has even just announced a quarterly cash dividend! Admittedly it is only paying 3 cents a share, but in these times this is not to be sneezed at.

Of course, these results in isolation may not be conclusive. After all, the Pegasystems rise in sales might simply indicate it is stealing market share from its rivals. However other big BPM players such as IBM are also claiming strong performance in the segment, so it is much more likely these figures shine a light on the way forward for users as they struggle to do more with less, and get a better level of control and governance over their processes.

Steve

In today’s climate, investment for IT is extremely hard to come buy.

BPM (Business Process Management) may promise a lot, but how can it be justified? With a free night or two in the Las Vegas MGM Grand Hotel perhaps?

The Integration Consortium, a not-for-profit consortium of users, suppliers, implementers and academia focused on all aspects of business integration, is hosting its annual Global Integration Summit this year in Las Vegas, 3rd-4th June, open to allcomers, and as a special incentive it is offering free rooms to the first 200 people to register for the event. So there’s the free night(s) in Las Vegas…but what about BPM? Well, for my sins I will be giving the ‘Featured Presentation’ at the event on how to justify BPM based on the idea of identifying the BPM Sweet Spots – that is,a range of use cases for BPM that each respond to a different investment policy. The idea is that depending on whether a company is focused on restricting resource requirements, or driving payback very quickly, or getting the biggest bang for the buck in the short term, or whatever, then there should be a BPM Sweet Spot that fits the bill. Well, that’s the theory, anyway…..!

At least the free room (if you are lucky enough to get one) is one bet you can’t lose on!

Steve

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

Oh dear. Once again I am about to be drawn into a row about vendor claims around SOA. Oh well – so be it.

I saw a link recently to a White Paper available through Information Week, by Metastorm Inc., which started off

While an SOA can go far in addressing the important security, reliability, and re-usability of services, SOA is nonetheless a technical approach. Thus, the challenge of SOA — and the key to achieving business value — is elevating service enablement beyond just technology functions. The reality is that SOA has limited value unless it encompasses disparate applications and platforms, and most importantly, it moves beyond technology and is orchestrated and controlled in the context of business processes.

OK, I see where the BPM vendor is going with this. But there is a glaring issue here in my mind. Stating that SOA is a technical approach, and discussing the need to move beyond technology (via the use of BPM) creates the false impression that SOA services are technical pieces of functionality as opposed to business services, and that implementing an SOA is jsut a technical exercise. This is absolutely not the case. I have discussed this many times, even in this blog. SOA services lie on business rather than technical boundaries – they execute a piece of business functionality as opposed to a technical one. Indeed, as I have also stated previously, this leads users into a position where they may be ‘backing into’ BPM through building orchestrated SOA services, but this does not require a BPM suite. In addition, a successful SOA implementation is almost NEVER just a technical exercise – it has to involve all sorts of disciplines.

I am not against BPM suites – in fact, I think they can add a lot of value when users have the enterprise-wide maturity to realize the full range of benefits they bring. But let’s make sure we keep the facts straight.

Steve