Comments on: Stack Vendors vs. Pure Plays, Round III

By: Scott Francis

Scott Francis — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:57:32 +0000

Phil –

Good points!
Your last point about the definition of BPM reminds me of a press release SAP did about 2 years ago about BPM… which, if you read their definition, was merely EAI (integration services), and a “totally new groundbreaking category of software” that they called Collaborative Application Frameworks (CAF)… which would be available in … you guessed it… 2 years… and if you read the definition slowly, you realize that CAF was describing a BPMS. Curiously, I haven’t seen a press release about CAF being released into the wild. And their attempt to rebrand EAI as BPM hasn’t taken with the market…

So, should we be surprised if IBM plays at the same tactics? Probably not.

By: Scott Francis

Scott Francis — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:57:00 +0000

Phil –

So, should we be surprised if IBM plays at the same tactics? Probably not.

By: Phil Gilbert

Phil Gilbert — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:03:08 +0000

IBM’s strategy isn’t dictated by the programmers who, no doubt, are working hard. But let’s get real: the IBM BPMS is a collection of tools that weren’t (and aren’t) primarily purposed for BPM! So to say there’s been a ton of BPM-related innovation at IBM is to ignore the reality.

IBM is using Websphere-based stalking horses to confuse the market into thinking they do BPM. The only other explanation is that their definition of BPM is wildly different from the pure-plays (in the same way that Orwell’s “War is peace” is wildly different from anyone else’s notion that ‘war’ and ‘peace’ are synonyms…)

By: Phil Gilbert

Phil Gilbert — Wed, 22 Jul 2009 22:03:00 +0000

By: Scott Francis

Scott Francis — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:47:31 +0000

@Harald –

First, let me just say that I don’t detect evil! :) Phil has his competitive fires stoked in his post, and its easy to get caught up in that, but I don’t consider the tactics evil, I just believe that when they are widespread, it hurts innovation in the BPM space, and causes customers to waste time and money on products that are inferior.

I used to work at a much larger software company, and we employed these tactics all the time to push other vendors out of our deals. At the same time, we would compete with the IBM’s of the world and try to prevent them from similarly outflanking us.

I know it makes the product teams cringe, because that’s their lifeblood being given away – blood, sweat, tears – and the more it is given away, the more likely they are going to be reassigned to a group that is still selling software for real money. That’s just the way it is.

As for the desperate sales exec – I’m not sure it is so much desperation as just standard operating procedure. Since I’ve seen BEA, IBM, Oracle, MSFT, and others do it… I can’t imagine it is just a reaction to quota stress on a single deal :)

By: Scott Francis

Scott Francis — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 22:47:00 +0000

@Harald –

By: Harald Nehring

Harald Nehring — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:01:22 +0000

Having worked in the real life of large software vendor sales AND product teams, I’m sure the BPMS folks at IBM cringe when seeing there product being “thrown in” to any other deal at a high discount. Where you’d like to detect an evil scheme, there’s nothing else than another desperate sales exec trying to make his quota at any cost. They work for a large vendor exactly because there’s so much goodies to throw in without worrying about overall product profitability.

By: Harald Nehring

Harald Nehring — Mon, 20 Jul 2009 12:01:00 +0000