TIBCO has announced its acquisition of Nimbus today:

Nimbus provides a strong complement to TIBCO’s event-enabled infrastructure software platform. Whereas TIBCO has traditionally focused on the automation of data, systems, and processes, Nimbus allows business users to collaboratively describe and document all aspects of a business – from operational best practices to organizational and system models. These are combined with robust governance capabilities that can deliver a process-focused “Intelligent Operations Manual” across the enterprise, linked to supporting data and systems. Nimbus focuses on the vast majority of processes that are often not captured in enterprise applications and automated workflows, and it has found particular traction with business transformation, compliance-led, and continuous improvement initiatives.

On the face of it it seems like a very complementary acquisition – I don’t see a lot of overlap between the market needs Nimbus addresses versus the market needs TIBCO addresses.  This might be seen as a move by TIBCO to inject some more business-friendly DNA into its veins, as right now TIBCO is seen as more of a speeds-n-feeds vendor than a business process management vendor.

Neil Ward-Dutton was first to the presses with his analysis of the buy:

Nimbus is happy to point out that historically it’s had a hard time selling to IT, and this has slowed down sales cycles; part of the challenge for it has been that Control doesn’t fit neatly into any mainstream product category (including BPA). TIBCO can help with the IT selling angle; but it’s important to recognise, too, that Nimbus can potentially give TIBCO a massive leg-up in terms of developing a more business-engaged field sales capability.

It sounds like a good synergistic match.  Neil characterizes Nimbus as a company with “annual revenues of around £10m and around 100 employees” – which implies the purchase price was easily digestible for a company the size of TIBCO.  Still, as we’ve seen with the IBM acquisition of Lombardi, sometimes a small (relatively) acquisition can have an outsized impact on the buyer.

Clay Richardson of Forrester also weighs in on the purchase:

So, why did TIBCO acquire Nimbus?  In many ways this deal is a nod to the “Empowered BT” trend, where more technical capability is being moved into the business.  For vendors like TIBCO, this means building – or buying – functionality that puts business stakeholders in the driver’s seat.  Over the past six months, one of the top inquiry topics I’ve seen from clients is around “models for increasing business engagement within BPM suites”.  In short,  I’ve fielded numerous calls from business stakeholders scratching their heads saying “I wrote the check for this BPM suite, but the IT guys are the only ones that can touch it.”

Empowered BT trend is a great way to sum up with the Nimbus folks (Ian Gotts in particular) have been preaching in their blogs and sales pitches.  Clay wraps up with this note:

TIBCO’s acquisition of Nimbus will be welcomed news to existing TIBCO customers looking to improve business engagement and – if executed effectively – should allow the developer-centric vendor to compete more effectively against more business-oriented players such as Appian and Lombardi  (i.e., IBM BPM 7.5).

I got a chuckle out of the last line.  But Clay is right – TIBCO needed something to help them compete with more business-oriented products on the market – what isn’t clear is whether Nimbus also needed to partner up with someone to keep going (as one person on twitter put it – is the lack of execution for one just as bad as the lack of business-focus for the other?).  I’m looking forward to seeing how well Nimbus is integrated, what role Ian Gotts is taking on, and how the analysts view on this acquisition evolves over the coming weeks.  So far no one is arguing that this is a bad fit… but we’re only a few hours in!

The early reviews of IBM BPM 7.5 were out last week, while IBM Impact was still in full swing.  It seems that the analysts in attendance were of differing opinions about the strength of IBM’s update to 7.5 – with Clay Richardson disappointed, and the other analysts ranging from reassured to impressed.

Clay’s review (“IBM Adds Fresh Coat Of Paint And New Tires To BPM Offering, But Still Needs To Rev Engine“) starts off:

So far, IBM is following the product integration roadmap John Rymer and I laid out in our report published immediately following IBM’s acquisition of Lombardi.

I’m sure IBM looks at it as, they were following their own roadmap and some of the points just happen to coincide with what analysts were clamoring for. One thing that the analyst community doesn’t seem to be comfortable with is that IBM doesn’t say much about future releases – they cite disclosure rules – and they only announce releases within the same quarter they’re to be released.  But beyond that, I think it is quite right that the decision about *how* to integrate Lombardi and WPS had not been finalized at this time last year.

With today’s announcement, IBM checks off the first point of integration on our list: establishing a single repository across Lombardi Teamworks and Websphere Process Server. With Business Process Manager V7.5, IBM will deliver a single repository for process assets that leverages Lombardi’s impressive “snapshot” version management and governance capabilities, providing a unified approach to administering and reusing process and integration assets.

I imagine that this retrofit to WPS and integration designer was actually quite a lot of work – and likely addressed the hardest technical parts of the integration of these two products.  But Clay goes on to say:

Although IBM has done a great job of delivering a unified repository, the core BPM engines and development environments will continue as standalone and separate entities — at least for BPM V7.5. While this is not surprising — we predicted that it would take three to four years for IBM to completely integrate Lombardi and WPS into a single unfied environment — we expected IBM to communicate a strategy or vision for merging the engines as part of this announcement.

I think this is a distinction that won’t matter to users.  It might surprise Clay to know that Lombardi, since 2005, effectively had two engines under the hood.  But it certainly never felt that way to users.  And with the integrated rules engine in IBM BPM 7.5, you could say it has 4 engines.  The point is – as long as the functionality works well together, this distinction won’t matter to process authors.  There’s also an option to deploy the whole stack into a single VM – particularly useful for developer machines.  Most people won’t quibble over different sections of code running inside a VM.  After all, an engine is just a body of code that transforms inputs into outputs based on current state plus a model which provides context.  A good BPMS will have more than one such body of code.  Even a good rule suite will have more than one engine.

So the issue in the future isn’t how many engines IBM will have embedded in its BPM suite.  The questions to ask are:

1. Will future versions feel like one product or two or more products.  Clearly the direction is to make IBM BPM feel like one product.
2. Will new versions of IBM BPM provide the same transformations of input to output given the same state and model context.

Information Week ran a story that reads very much like Clay’s:

IBM’s approach can be contrasted with that of Oracle, which took a decisive step in 2010 when it integrated the AquaLogic BPM system it acquired with BEA with its own legacy BPM product. That move yielded a single product and a clear roadmap, but it also forced existing customers of both products to do considerable migration work to move forward.

Except that when their article contrasts IBM and Oracle, it fails to mention that Oracle bought BEA in January 2008, nearly 3 years earlier (Clay, however, was more fair in his comparison).  And yet the expectation is that IBM provide this transformation in a year.

But while Clay was focused on the need to consolidate engines, others focused on the market signals IBM was sending.

As Bruce Silver wrote in his rebuttal:

Some have called it just “a new coat of paint” on the existing offerings, because the (Lombardi) Process Designer and the (WPS) Integration Designer tools are both still there, and both runtime engines are still there as well.  But that misses the point.  Where IBM last year was pushing separate fit-for-purpose BPMSs – something nobody really wants – they now can offer a single BPMS that has the combined functionality of WPS and WLE.

I agree with Bruce – at a detail-level, it also ignores the interface makeover WPS Integration Designer got, to match the repository unification (which added significant versioning functionality to WPS).   At a big picture level, it misses the point, which Bruce makes:

Beyond that, this announcement represents a major shift in IBM’s strategy for addressing the BPM marketplace.  You might even call it a palace coup:  the Lombardi/human/business-centric value system overthrowing the old WebSphere/integration/developer-centric value system, or even a BPM perspective rising above the SOA perspective.  Given the existing installed-base investment on the two sides, this is truly a wag-the-dog moment.

I think this represents IBM’s move to capture the business-oriented perspective of the BPM market – something that was part product functionality, part product design, and partly go-to-market.  Bruce’s summary:

And here’s the thing:  it’s ONE product.  You get it all.  Business-empowered design, what-you-see-is-what-you-execute, and instant playback.  SOA and integration services.  Powerful business rules. [...] but I think everyone is surprised they got it done already.

Bruce has another post on the BPMS Endgame which predicts that IBM will focus on BPMN2 engine work for the 8.0 release timeframe.

Neil Ward-Dutton also rebuts Forrester’s assessment:

However when you look deeper, the release of Business Process Manager marks a significant departure for IBM, and warrants a thorough reappraisal of IBM’s competitive position.

He also hits on a few key points of integration:

1. Unified repository toolset
2. Unified governance toolset
3. Single Deployment runtime foundation (no more copying EAR and WAR files around)
4. Single Administration environment

Better yet:

Business Process Manager makes the relationship clear: Process Designer is aimed at business-facing teams collaborating to optimise business processes; Integration Designer is aimed at IT teams working to orchestrate the integration of systems to support the optimisation of those processes. Again – these two environments work together through the use of a shared repository and governance toolset.

Tony Baer also humorously commented on the Lombardification of IBM BPM.  Unlike David Brakoniecki, I couldn’t resist revisiting the analyst reviews.  David points out a few of the “unsung features” in the 7.5 release:

• A powerful REST API which in theory should allow better and richer user interfaces to be built
• A new charting technology (based on iLog jViews, I think)

I’d add to that the deployment characteristics – the fact that we will be able to build solutions with both the Process Designer and the Integration Designer – and then manage and deploy them from the same repository, to the same run-time clusters – is a big improvement over the state of the art in the previous versions.  And it appears to be a big improvement in how both WLE and WPS previously managed deployments.

Sandy Kemsley took more time to write her analysis, and it demonstrates her extra time to reflect.  I liked the shout out to our sleuthing out the announcement ahead of time (maybe IBM should include me on their analyst briefings so that we’ll be embargoed as well!…).  She writes:

It’s important to look at how the IBM organization has realigned to allow for the new product release: Phil Gilbert, former president and CTO of Lombardi, now has overall responsibility for all of WebSphere BPM – including both the former Lombardi and WebSphere BPM products – plus ILOG rules management. Neil Ward-Dutton referred to this as the reverse takeover of IBM by Lombardi; when I had a chance for a 1:1 with Phil at Impact, I told him that we’d all bet that he would be gone from IBM after a year. He admitted that he originally thought so too, until they gave him the opportunity to do exactly what he knew needed to be done: bring together all of the IBM BPM offerings into a unified offering. This new product announcement is the beginning of that unification, but they still have a ways to go.

When the buyout happened I often heard this argument that Phil would be gone within a year.  But, living in Austin, I’ve seen a few promising startups purchased by IBM in my day (Tivoli and Webify just to name two), and I’ve also known Phil for… 10-12 years now.  My sense was that IBM has the scope and opportunity on the big stage that Phil would really relish taking advantage of.  IBM is big enough to make the right role for someone like Phil – in a way that very few companies can.  If they were willing to do it, I felt like they had a chance to hang on to Phil.  I felt the same way about most of the people acquired with Lombardi – some would leave, but IBM has the reach and size and money to keep people if it chooses (and if it acts in time).

Regarding that “two engines” argument from Clay:

However, from the customer/user standpoint, it’s wrapped into a single Process Server, so if IBM ever gets around to refactoring into a single engine, that could be made fairly transparent to their customers, but would likely have the benefit of reducing IBM’s internal engineering costs around maintaining one versus two engines.

I think Sandy hits it just right.  The issue isn’t how many engines are under the hood – it is what does it feel like to the customer.  Regarding the lack of a cloud offering for BPM: “They need to rethink their strategy on this, and stop offering expensive custom hosted or private ‘cloud’ platforms as their only cloud alternatives.”  Again, I think Sandy’s right. It is hard to tell in what time frame it really starts to hurt, but the trend lines are there, and they’re plain to see.

Great reviews and perspectives to soak up.  Nothing I like more than reading these competing perspectives and conclusions and then reconciling with my own opinions and the impressions of the BP3 team.

Joe Heller, CIO of Caterpillar, gave an outstanding lesson in lasting business partnerships at IBM’s Impact conference on Day 1 (Monday, April 11th, 2011).  Joe was highly quotable (“There is dirt in the wrong place all over the world, and we are there to put it in the right place”), but beneath these quotes is a deep sense of business value over time.

And he wasn’t shy about sharing real dollar values in savings.

I think David Brakoniecki sums it up best in his post:

83 years of Partnership – Caterpillar has had a relationship with IBM for 83 years.
From a business perspective, I find this mind-blowing.  Having worked the last 12 years in small businesses and start-ups, I’m lucky if I can point to a continuing business relationship that goes back 5 years.
In recent times, the recession has claimed several major brands so it’s easy to forget that long-term business partnerships are not only possible but also worth having.  It’s mpressive that the CIO of Caterpillar was willing to stand on stage and say that IBM has never disappointed him in his 38 years of working together.

It is a pretty remarkable partnership.

Other thoughts on Day 1′s General session:

• The video wall is truly massive.  The room itself is massive.  And I can’t imagine how they’ll fit more than 8000 people in one room next year.
• It is also interesting how cultural differences come out in a conference like this.  At one point, Marie Weick, in the middle of a very well-delivered segment, repeated some advice once given to her: “In your career you can only move forward or fall behind”.  From the perspective of someone outside the corporate ladder-climbing world, this sounds off – a career is more than two dimensions measured forward and back.  I would wish for everyone to realize that early in their career rather than late.
• Dr. Burns has one of the most compelling cases for application of technology – pediatric care.  It is well worth watching on the livestream video.
• It takes an immense amount of coffee to serve this many people.  Don’t expect to find coffee at the coffee stations right outside the main event.
• Impact Day 1 kicked off on an odd note, with the opening musical performance.  At some point three of the musicians switched from instruments to iPads to finish their musical number (and of course, you can’t tell if they’re actually playing or if it was all pre-recorded, but one wonders).  It was an interesting choice to kick off the conference.

Notes from the Rest of Day 1

After the General Session, I wanted to see what IBM was saying about “which BPM to use” in one of the early sessions of the day.  Sometimes it is good to get the official positioning so that you understand how far out of alignment your own opinions are.

IBM’s positioning of BlueworksLive is:

1. No training to use
2. Social Application, which helps scale social talk across the business
3. Doc and discovery tool that is easy to use
4. Automate simple processes

At this point, I noticed the room was full.  More than full.  This would continue in virtually every BPM session that touched on Lombardi heritage at all.  IBM’s conference organizers continue to under-estimate the demand for Lombardi-BPM-themed content – but we can hope that next year will be different under the IBM BPM branding.

Someone described BlueworksLive as “Powerpoint for process applications”.

There is an open question for IBM, which remains unanswered: How to support the partner community with this product?  IBM really depends on its partner channel to expose customers to products.  Unfortunately BlueworksLive leaves a lot to be desired from a partner point of view (one could even argue that the automation is competitive with partner service offerings).  I think the answer is to simply add a few features that will make this product more partner-friendly:

• the ability to move models from one corporate account to another (so that I can move drafts created in my sandbox to the customer’s BlueworksLive spaces).
• an expert BPMN diagramming mode that allows expert modelers to be more precise in their process definitions.
• more features like the “playback” feature that was introduced in the last BlueworksLive update.

Next, IBM positioned IBM BPM as targeted at the high volume, repeatable processes, while BlueworksLive is focused on the long tail processes.  Both products offer “tooling that is easy to use” (relatively speaking), “transactional integrity and scale”,  “unified environment for governance, visibility, and control”, and versioning.  (Of course, they achieve this in very different ways and targeted at different processes and users.)

Next up, I went to a hands-on lab for BlueworksLive. But, being a newcomer to Impact, it wasn’t what I expected, so I said hi to a few people and then went to take a certification test in another room.

Lunch was a forgettable affair in the trade show area.  We left lunch quickly and met up with the analysts and bloggers who were sequestered on the first floor of the conference getting the low-down on all things IBM.  Flournoy and I were able to meet with Neil Ward-Dutton , and then he was nice enough to call out Sandy Kemsley (nice to meet for the first time!), Clay Richardson, and Bruce Silver.  It was great to hear their early impressions on the IBM BPM 7.5 release first hand – it definitely added color to the blogs they wrote later.  We shared notes and there was, generally, consensus (except for Clay).   It is too bad they are isolated from the rest of the conference, I think it would be really interesting for them to see how other people interpret what they’re hearing in typical Impact sessions (I imagine they got some of this if they stayed through til Tuesday or Wednesday).

In the afternoon I saw the “Measuring Quality” session by Fahad Osmani and Sean Pizel, of IBM.  It was a wide-ranging presentation, best to get the presentation slides rather than rely on my notes.  They suggest some new measurements for BPM projects, and pointed out that programs that deliver value, repeatedly, almost always turn into successes.

We then went into a meeting with folks from the IBM partner enablement community.  We were impressed by how motivated IBM’s partner groups were to make sure BP3 is successful as an IBM partner.  It was an intense and productive conversation, and we left with concrete follow ups.  The quality of the meetings their partner group set up for us was quite impressive.

After the partner session, I made it to the second Lincoln Trust presentation of the day (I had heard great reviews of their first session of the day, just prior).  In this session they talked about their strategy for addressing a high volume of processes (100′s) with a small team and small budget.  The answer, of course, was to have standard lightweight process definitions that could represent more than one of these processes.  The key outcomes they were looking for were tracking (for visibility), standardization, and governance.  By implementing lightweight processes that could act more generically, they gave themselves a lot more data about each process before investing in building something more technically demanding.

The Lincoln Trust approach reminds me quite a lot of the Banco Espirito (BES) approach.  At this point, the team dove into technical details behind their implementation (great content).

We had dinner with a fellow BPM practitioner and long-time colleague, and then headed over to iTKO’s party at Tao Beach, where we were able to catch up with friends at their company and IBMers who also joined in.  iTKO was a Diamond sponsor of Impact – quite a step up from last year.  They made a big splash and they’ve had a great year.  Kudos to the iTKO team for a big contribution to the quality of the conference.

At the end of Day 1, I was motivated and exhausted. It was time to rest up for Day 2.

Day 2 of IBM Impact started off well.  I went down to breakfast and sat with a senior member of IBM technical staff, as well as a few gentlemen visiting from Farmer’s Insurance.  Good conversation over a light breakfast, followed by the keynote.

Katie Lindendoll was our emcee for Day 2.  Steve Mills followed her with a fluid, yet technical, presentation of IBM software in the context of 100 years of IBM history.   A couple of key points jumped out at me and into my notes from the session (which were light, because Steve does a good job demanding your attention while he’s talking):

• You should own your own process and your own data.  This is a theme IBM hit on several times.  It seems to support two legs of IBM’s business – on-premise software and “private clouds”.  But it also is a more philosophical point that IBM believes a move to the cloud should not give up your control over process and data.
• Your processes power your company.  (I didn’t count how many times he said the word “process” – but I should have.  It might have been a record for IBM keynotes).
• “Not lots of new things in IT, but there are lots of improving things in IT”.  Well said.
• Big focus on reducing TCO – Most IT organizations spend 80% of their budget just maintaining what they have in production.
• Hammering on atomicity – transactional accuracy – as a key underpinning to good (and accurate) processes (“We saw this problem coming, and understood what people would want to do with it”)

Next up was Phil Gilbert, formerly CTO and President of Lombardi, now VP of BPM at IBM.  He starts with the thought that we shouldn’t be talking about transforming.  We should start with “transformed” – as in, if you’re sitting in the audience, you’ve already been transformed by the economic and technical environment.  A couple of key stats:

• 50Billion devices connected to the internet by 2020 (Nokia estimate)
• 70% of businesses outsource a key process
• $488B lost to inefficiencies each year
• 20% of revenues over next 5 years will come from unknown sources

The chief argument: complexity is increasing, at an increasing rate.  And yet IT spend is flat or down over the last few years, with no sign of significant change.

The livestream is here, and embedded below (fast forward to 23:30 for Phil’s contribution):

Phil did a good job rebutting a key argument often used against BPM – putting power in the hands of the business does not mean turning business users into developers.  Just like we didn’t turn attorneys into typists when we introduced computers, and yet they all manage their own documents and have much higher personal productivity than we could have imagined in the era of typists.

Four key themes for the talks today were re-emphasized:  Visibility, Governance, Simplicity, and Power.

I liked his thought on six-sigma: “Doing improvement without assuming technology just is NOT where we are today in the real world.  We need to account for the technology as well in our work.”  Something we’ve been arguing as well, since at least 2007.

Then he introduced IBM BPM 7.5 – the joining of Websphere Lombardi Edition and WPS.  My old colleague Brandon Baxter was brought in to assist with the demo.  New branding/interface on the Integration Designer to make it match the Process Designer.  Phil lays it out afterward:  “They have to not just work together.  They have to work the same”

They also showed of revamped critical path management functionality, showing projected due dates and changes to the process and the implied affect on due date.  Projections can be optimistic, pessimistic, or historically most likely dates.

Phil ended with a note on tying many products together (paraphrasing from my notes):

It isn’t a weakness to have overlapping technical solutions for common – but not identical – problem spaces.

A 75-year partnership with Caterpillar did not just start with a computer.  Enabling a new platform for business.  And a commitment to bring along the things that came before.  We’re not dogmatic, but we are leaders.

Following Phil’s talk was a surprisingly good roundtable with two executives from Nationwide Insurance and two executives from Verizon Wireless.  Pretty good shout-outs to ILOG on this panel.

Wrapping up Day 2 was Scott Klososky.  And his first point was something I can get behind- that technology is art not engineering.  In light of this, and the changes to our lives that technology is weaving, we need leaders with new skills – and they need to add these skills at a faster rate than we’ve been seeing.  They need to be able to predict the future accurately and be visionary, accurately.  And then invest the time, money, and people to get there in time!

He then emphasized augmented intelligence, long term leadership (short term leadership is just “management”), and how to leverage social media to stay well-read in your area of expertise.

 Great way to start Day 2 at Impact.

Other Notes from Day 2

Later, I attended a session on UI-building on IBM BPM. Unfortunately so much time was spent on rehashing the normal ways of building UIs that we didn’t get enough time in the session to really see something different and new, though we did get a very deep technical dive on some of the approaches for different types of UIs.

In the afternoon, I spent some time with David Brakoniecki (of Axispoint) sharing notes on sessions we’d been to at the conference, and the market in general. It was the first time we’d met in person (previously only on Twitter) so I guess we now have to admit David is a real live person.

Then we hit Clay Richardson’s session on why BPM is hot. Though it seemed more focused on why BPM efforts are sometimes “hitting the wall”. Short version: lots of running analogies, a focus on the personality “types” you have in BPM initiatives (though I’m not fond of all the short-hand names like “Guru” and “Prodigy”). A key point of emphasis was active leadership from either the business owner, business analyst, or process architect. A process analyst cannot be an order taker – has to be more assertive and involved.

After that was a very good session on BPM Architectures by Zach Roadhouse and Karri Carlson-Neumann – in which they described how IBM BPM 7.5 now takes full advantage of Websphere’s Profile Manager. This allows much better, repeatable, control over exactly how IBM BPM is deployed, without requiring the writing of a great many scripts. They reviewed scenarios from the trivial (all-in-one-JVM) to the complex (clustering multiple services independently and layering them across your servers). It has all the advantages of Ant scripts (accuracy, repeatability), without requiring us to actually learn all the ins and outs of manipulating Websphere via Ant.

The three of us (Lance, Flournoy, and myself) finally were able to meet in the same place – at dinner.

So the new Forrester Wave is out.  What’s that? you hadn’t heard?  If not, you haven’t talked to anyone in the analyst or BPM vendor community in the last 24 hours!

As usual, there are a raft-load of vendors declaring victory:

Appian: “Appian Still Leading the Pack”

Pega:  “Pegasystems ranked #1 as one of two BPM vendors that ‘lead the pack with the best overall combination of modeling, design and development features for business and technical roles driving process improvement’ “  (bonus, their article includes the image of the Wave graphic itself)

Metastorm: “Metastorm Recognized as a Leader in Business Process Management Suites Report…”

IBM has several congratulatory tweets about being in the leader quadrant, but I haven’t seen a press release yet.

Judging by the wave, I should be able to add links to Progress and Software AG press releases or blog posts by this time tomorrow.

Every one of these vendors will crow that the analysts have confirmed that they’re as smart as they thought they were – that they’re leaders (or even, “number 1″).

So, I’ll let you in on a little secret.  The Wave won’t tell you which BPMS makes the most sense for you.  Some of these offerings are actually so different that they rarely, if ever, compete for the same customer projects, and often corporations own more than one product because they aren’t viewed as doing the same thing.  For example, Appian’s strength in SaaS means that will compete more often for SaaS deployments – the decision “to SaaS or not to SaaS” was probably made before any vendors were called.   Metastorm’s strength in EA may play well with customers who are doing a lot of modeling, but for projects that are more focused on implementation, or who already own other EA tools, that offering won’t be as compelling as something more targeted at executing processes.  Even Pega (apparently depicted as #1 on the Wave), isn’t as often in competition for general-purpose BPM platform purchases – they tend to be in the finals for more vertical processes, where their investment in specific templates or verticals or applications can really pay off.  A friend once described Pega as more a company that sells rules- and BPM- enabled applications, rather than BPM itself (it wasn’t a criticism, my friend thought it was good strategy for the company).

Of course the meat of these things is in the written words inside the report, but it is hard to get there when there is that tasty graphic that everyone can look at.  I wonder what would happen if Forrester withheld the scoring and the graphic for a couple of weeks, and just revealed the more in-depth analysis.  Another interesting data point would be the number of times (that Forrester can determine) any two vendors were finalists in the same evaluation – which would allow for a 2×2 grid/heatmap that shows you who is competing with whom.  I was happy to see Forrester give up on separating BPM into various different flavors of BPM – that approach never really worked for me, personally.

So everyone is happy now.  But in the morning, we’ll humbly get back to work and get some processes built and deployed, and improve some processes.  Which is, after all, the whole point of BPM.

Update: as expected, a few announcements today:

Software AG announces their leadership status here.

And Progress’ blog entry can be found here.

The news hit the wire this morning (early for me, as I’m sitting in San Francisco this morning).  I got a phone call at about 5:20am PST to give me the news (thanks, I think?!).

The Lombardi press release touts a shared belief in customer success, a good product and culture fit, as well as good ole market opportunity:

“Any discussion on business improvement inevitably leads to improving the processes that are at the heart of every company,” said Craig Hayman, general manager, IBM Application and Integration Middleware. “Recognizing this, IBM has strengthened its presence and investments in business process and integration software to meet these growing client demands. Lombardi fills out our company’s portfolio in this key area.”

Lombardi already supports Websphere, and  was an early adopter of the app server in the BPM space (I can testify, I was there with Lombardi’s first Websphere clients).  In Austin, we’ve certainly seen a history of IBM successfully acquiring and expanding software companies that were acquired (Tivoli and Webify come to mind).

I’m sure there will be more news as the day(s) go on, I’ll try to just keep this post updated with the latest, unless something comes up that deserves an entire post on the subject.

Congratulations to the Lombardi team, who have been breaking ground in the BPM space for years now, and yet staying focused on making customers successful, not just on the latest bell or whistle on the product road map.  I think there’s a good chance, depending on the structure of the takeover, that some of Lombardi’s DNA will rub off on the BPM-focused parts of IBM.  I can see the effect Webify has had on IBM’s efforts, and I always thought Lombardi’s and Webify’s products would make for an interesting combination. Now we’ll get to find out, I guess!

More to come…

IBM press release here.

UPDATE: 12/16/2009 7:20am PST
Keep up to date with what the analysts (and others) are saying on Twitter:

And then we have a post from Phil Gilbert on “The Second Decade of BPM“. Phil’s take on where BPM is headed, with an interesting look back:

I can’t begin to convey the impact this will have on how and where BPM will be practiced, going forward. In the blurb above on this blog site (which was posted when I started this blog in 2005), I said that by 2010 process will be the primary prism through which large companies view themselves; and that by 2020 the management of process will be “second nature.” The first of those milestones has come to pass: process is not simply the way business operates itself, but manages itself.

Phil has a pretty good sense of the big picture.

Second, because Lombardi has focused on the business user, we have also focused on how to engage and support the business user. The work we’ve done on culture, change management, governance and BPM methodology is the best in the industry. Lombardi University and its role-based curriculum, along with tiered certifications and advanced mentoring, means that Lombardi can help IBM scale their business customers more quickly into the world of BPM. Lombardi’s On-Demand Assistance program is also built from the ground up to allow fledgling BPM teams built on business-first principles to still have a technical safety net under them.

This quote illustrates for me what I hope Lombardi can bring to IBM. A better understanding of how to support the business and help them achieve success via BPM, and a better sense of what BPM really could mean for the business world.

UPDATE 12/16/2009 8:45am PST
Austin Startup is carrying the standard press release.

And ebizQ has already launched a forum topic on the subject.

UPDATE 11:35am PST: More great coverage and viewpoints:
Dennis Byron discusses the acquisition, and is focused primarily on eliminating one more option from potential customers, and the inexorable force of consolidation.

Redmonk gives props to the Austin software and enterprise scene, as well as to the deal-making by IBM. The big question is how well IBM can incorporate Lombardi without losing its DNA.

Miko Matsumura posits that this might have been a firesale based on the language of the press release. Could be, Miko has more experience with this than I do. Regardless, I think the timing was good for IBM because I expect 2010 to be a big year for BPM software.

Sandy Kemsley chimes in with the best run-down of the analyst call.

Update EOD 12/16/2009:
David Moser of Australia weighs in. He points out which communities might win or lose, based on this deal going through, in particular which customers. But he also points out:

And with what should be a significant boost to their market, some of the biggest winners could be Lombardi service providers. Watch out for skills shortages.

I happen to agree, that service providers (e.g. BP3) could be well positioned to benefit because, no doubt IBM can sell more of the same product with its much larger sales channel. It takes time for people to ramp up on a BPM product. For a time I expect there will be exacerbated shortages of Lombardi BPM skills, but of course we’ll try to help as best we can!

Bruce Silver also comments on the deal. The tone of Bruce’s post (and some others) is a bit somber – I think some of the folks out there were rooting for a Lombardi IPO or for a deal that made it more clear that Lombardi would still be providing leadership in the BPM space from a “vision” perspective. There is an emerging consensus among outsiders that “departmental” is a losing strategy. I think if it is a pricing/marketing strategy it has legs – potentially target lots of smaller installations to service departments, but if it is reflected in technical direction of the product it could be a real problem. There’s no reason the tech can’t scale much bigger than a department, but its still up to IBM-Lombardi to decide what the market positioning and pricing breakpoints are.

Tony Baer’s take on the acquisition titled “Early thoughts on IBM buying Lombardi“. His emphasis on Lombardi’s chief advantage to IBM is its simplicity – making it possible to address the business directly within the enterprise. He’s looking for the integration of Blueprint and Blueworks to be a good indicator of how this purchase is going to work out.

UPDATE 12/17/2009: Well the blogs keep rolling in with new thoughts or analysis.

Jaisundar’s take is that blueprint is a key piece of the puzzle by widening the user base for BPM and creating a demand funnel. So much comes down to how IBM handles it and whether they keep the Lombardi DNA, while adding to it their massive sales channel synergies.

Meanwhile, Richard Watson has a couple of witty posts on the subject of showers (listing the # of bpm products and related products IBM has purchased as an embarrassment of riches and portfolio overlaps – but also, market clout. In a previous post, he makes the best statement about this subject: “If IBM wants to become the leader in BPM, they need to get out of the data center and start thinking like business people.” – This is exactly why people are excited about the merger, and why they’re worried. Lombardi is not stuck in the data center mindset. Will that business-focus be lost in the merger? That’s the real fear.

And Derek Miers, well-respected for his thoughtfulness on business process and business improvement, took a look at this merger and concludes:

While the choice of dance partner was a little surprising, the desire for a liquidity event in the Lombardi management team was there to see long ago. They touted an IPO around this time, but in the current market that was always going to be difficult.

IBM brings the broad base and ability to grow. Lombardi brings market cachet / credibility that is hard to quantify – but everyone in BPM knows Lombardi and they’re well-respected. Derek’s take on Lombardi’s success:

As I have said to many other vendors, when people buy BPM products, they buy the promise of success. And I am sure Lombardi’s success in the market is as much down to that aspect as it is their leading technology stack. They help their customers understand how they will succeed in meeting their business objectives (rather than touting the beauty of their technology stack).

That’s exactly the point – the culture that Lance and I (and execs at Lombardi) tried to create in the services organization was around business objectives and customer success. Something we’ve endeavored to continue at bp3.

Update EOD 12/17/2009:
Clay Richardson of Forrester Research writes up his analysis, which includes:

Ultimately, this deal centers on the need for IBM to develop a more compelling story for the business. In many ways it is further validation of the IT-to-BT transition that we are seeing within the enterprise.

IBM already had their story down for the CIO and needed to develop a more compelling story for the VP of Operations, and the VP of Customer Service, and the VP of Procurement – in other words IBM needed to establish a stronger voice into the business. And this is what Lombardi does best as a leader in the human-centric BPM space.

If he’s right, this is good news for Lombardi and its customer-base (and prospective customers). He follows up his points with Phil Gilbert’s plan to push the envelope with Blueprint even further “to collaborate on scoping and discovery for enterprise process initiatives.” As he says, IBM is weak in that area, and there’s little overlap. His basic take is that this is a capability buy as much as a technical buy. If he’s right, it bodes well for the future of BPM, or at least the future of IBM BPM!

Update EOD 12/18/2009: You thought we were done with the updates? you were wrong!

Dr. Diaz, on the IBM BPM Blueworks Blog, gives another IBM angle on the acquisition – conveying a sense of confidence and positivity in the IBM strategy.

John Reynolds, of Lombardi and soon IBM, writes a pretty good defense of the “Department” positioning – after all, what is “bottom-up” BPM if it isn’t a department level solution that scales up to meet your enterprise strategy, vs. the top-down BPM approaches that IBM has been using so far:

It’s not really a technology issue – Lombardi’s solution scales quite nicely. It’s a methodology issue… Some tools really enhance the “Top Down” (Enterprise) approach, while others really enhance the “Bottom Up” (Departmental) approach. Offering both seems like a pretty good idea when you think about it.

Update 12/21/2009:
Jennifer Dubow (@jennifer_dubow) posts a link to an IBM F.A.Q. on the Lombardi acquisition. Hits all the high points with no muss, no fuss.

Update 12/22/2009
Neil Ward-Dutton of MWD Advisors recaps the responses of vendors, which generally provide for fun reads. Of course, if you read their blogs without, somehow, realizing their corporate affiliation you might fall for their bias without correcting for it. Its only natural for competitors to see this as an opportunity to try to steal a march while IBM / Lombardi are distracted by integrating two companies – but having been on the other side of this – it didn’t often work as well as we would hope – often the buyer was able to keep the momentum going in the 12-18 month timeframe.

Update 12/29/2009 Jim Sinur weighs in with Power Vendors vs. Pure Plays, positing that the Power Vendors are catching up. I don’t see the catch-up that Jim is mentioning, but I do see catch-up-by-aggregration and the question is whether any of the remaining pure-plays have enough heft to out-innovate the big guys. Obviously small vendors with a tight focus can continue to outpace bigger players in their niche, but the wide Pure Play field has been thinned with this acquisition…

Update 12/30/2009In the ProcessMaker Blog, Brian makes one of the most compelling statements about why IBM bought Lombardi (and although he didn’t address why IBM bought other Business* companies – e.g. iLog, FileNet, Cognos, Webify, etc. – the same logic applies quite well). The short version: it is about addressing markets, not technology. And if Lombardi addresses a particular market, and is scaling, then IBM can plug that into their vast sales and partner channel and really wring value out of it. The thesis rests on the assumption that the BPM market is hot – but that’s a safe one.

Update 01/06/2010 The debate spills over into 2010. Neil Ward-Dutton reprises his previous review with a more considered analysis and the summary is that perhaps IBM really is buying Lombardi to get a better “business-facing” solution – but that they just don’t want to admit that blatantly in their external positioning. Its an interesting read.

Update 01/08/2010Gartner’s Janelle Hill and Jim Sinur report on the acquisition for Gartner. Basically they advise getting ready for a move to Websphere if you aren’t on it already, in a timeframe of two years, and tout the BPM DNA acquired in the Lombardi acquisition.