Have you noticed an increased presence of Apple products in public spaces and workspaces in the last few years? Turns out that 21% of information workers are using one or more Apple products for work. Almost half of enterprises (1000 employees or more) are issuing Macs to at least some employees – and they plan a 52% increase in the number of Macs they issue in 2012.

But that’s just Macs.  The numbers are actually more stark for iPads and iPhones. 11% of the workforce using iPhones, 9% using iPads, and 8% using Macs.  The trends are most highly supported by execs and managers – who use Apple products at twice the average rate (over 40%), and with the youngest workers, who also use Apple products at twice the rate.  Great trends for Apple products in the work place.  Think about that – you can reach the most influential members of business – 40% of them and growing – via Apple product-focus.

So the debate of which mobile OS to target first for your mobile app has been an interesting one.  Last year (actually late 2010) Fred Wilson came down on the side of Android first.  But while this might have been a good “by the numbers” recommendation, there are some subtleties that I would have argued made iOS still the place to start for most mobile apps:

• iOS device owners spend more money on apps (and content in general).
• iOS device owner demographics trend toward higher income brackets ( desirable demographics to sell to and advertise to )
• Apple’s iPhone and iPad had healthy halos around them that made them attractive “launch” vehicles for an app.  Wherever you look at ads for an institutions “mobile app” the premier imagery features a prominent iPhone.  Later on these institutions started including Android phones that look… well, they look just like iPhones anyway.

Finally, regardless of which OS you target first, or even if you’re cross-platform from the beginning, you might as well release on each platform one at a time – and get the press release mileage out of it.

Articles like the Forrester article, and of course Apple’s amazing Q4 performance, are reminders that the iOS platform is still the one with cachet, with the halo.

Related posts:

1. iPhone in the Enterprise
2. Six Barriers to BPM Adoption in the Enterprise
3. Fascinating TechCrunch Article on the New Enterprise Customer

Increasingly, companies are using business process management suite (BPMS) or dynamic case management (DCM) solutions as the primary point of entry for strategic, cross-functional processes and view individual CRM functions as supporting administrative processes. However, taking advantage of these solutions may require a higher level of process management maturity and skills than is typically found in many organizations.

But really, if you’re asking yourself a question in the form of: “What systems can we replace with BPM?”, you’re probably asking the wrong question.  Of course, existing systems or software categories might get displaced by BPM in your organization.  But that isn’t the starting point – it is only a side-effect.  You start and end with a process, and focusing on the best way to start it, execute it, and finish it.

If your CRM system is the system of record, and you need to layer more process, or better process, or more dynamic process on top of it, so be it. But that typically doesn’t require ripping out the old CRM system.  But what about small or medium-sized businesses?  Are small businesses going to turn to BPM instead of SalesForce or SugarCRM or other similar tools?  I don’t the CRM space is in any danger, per se, from BPM  (or its variants).

On the other hand, if Mr. Band is really asking “is BPM where the action is in CRM?” – then he might be on to something. BPM is influencing traditional Enterprise Software and approaches to managing the silo-ed business functions that it supports.

Related posts:

1. Question: Why do so Many BPM Projects Fail?
2. The BPM Question
3. Don’t Learn the Wrong Lesson from Zappos

First, two articles by Anne Stuart on ebizQ.  The first post, early returns, focuses on this year’s theme for the event, “Customer Engagement”:

“What was good enough before is not good enough today,” Derek Miers, a Forrester principal analyst, warned in one of the event’s opening sessions. And, he added, customer-engagement approaches that work right now won’t be sufficient for long; they’ll need to continue evolving to meet changing customer needs. “We almost have to rebuild the ship while we’re at sea,” he noted.

This sounds like a riff on continuous process improvement – you don’t “arrive at the destination” so much as always take a step back and see how you can improve and then refocus your efforts.  The landscape is changing, so the same goals may not stay relevant over time.

Next up was a post of shorthand notes from a session about getting started with DCM.

Sandy Kemsley once again takes the honors for Most Complete Coverage of the event, with no less than 5 posts tagged accordingly.  In one post, “Empowering the Customer Through Process Improvement and BPM“, she notes:

They [Nokia Siemens Networks] are a big SAP customer, but find that they use Appian BPM to fill the gaps that SAP just doesn’t do without major customization, and to bridge between different systems. They’ve implemented BPM in five major business areas with more than 22,000 users. By reusing some components but adapting to each particular business area, they’re able to roll out new systems in a matter of months. They are pushing into social capabilities to facilitate faster decision-making, and mobile platforms to better support remote users.

Wait, I thought SAP = BPM? Well, layering process on top of SAP is a common BPM deployment story. In another summary, this particular phrasing rang true for me:

Looking at processes in customer experience, we need to use Lean principles to eliminate waste from the customer viewpoint, not just the company viewpoint. We need to understand the full customer journey and all of the touchpoints that need to be managed, and ensure that the end-to-end customer processes are properly defined and orchestrated. This can lead to businesses reorganizing to eliminate business functional silos in favor of process-focused organizational models.

I think the concept of eliminating waste from the customer experience as well as from the company viewpoint is critical.  All too often ill-thought process improvement exercises just “squeeze the balloon”  – moving a burden from one part of the process to another, from one group to another.  If the group you’re moving the process burden to is your customer, look out…

We hope to get to BPF12 next year – for some reason this one flew below the radar all year and sneaked up on us while we were busy making BPM projects happen!

Related posts:

1. The Value of Customer Engagement on Twitter?
2. Forrester’s Business Technology Forum Recap #BTF09
3. Keith Swenson’s Notes from Forrester BPM Forum

He draws a correlation between process maturity and focus on customer experience. Maturity level 1-2 cost reduction is the top category (74%). Level 2-3 customer experience is the biggest. levels 3-4 and 4-5 customer experience remains high but value innovation becomes most important. Waste elimination remains that the same levels at all levels. The “ah-ha” moment was that if at level 2-3 you don’t focus on customer experience improvement, you will never get to level 3-5. (Survey is mostly business people, not IT – Forrester/QPC business process maturity survey)

Looks like a great day of sessions, but I agree with Keith that 7:30am is inhumane in any timezone.

Related posts:

1. Forrester’s Business Process Forum 2011: Customer Engagement
2. Forrester’s Business Technology Forum Recap #BTF09
3. A Couple of Notes on the Economy

One pioneer that I interviewed was immensely proud of his lightning roll out of a guerilla app to support his firm’s front office in advising clients on complex product choices. I asked him about future plans and sheepishly he admitted they would be starting again from scratch because the guerilla app was unable to leverage enterprise services exposing critical data about product offerings. He remarked ruefully that sometimes you do have to follow the IT standards “yellow brick road” rather than just head for the hills, but wouldn’t it be great to have the best of both worlds, with both agile deployment and full advantage taken of enterprise assets and data?

Well this practically sounds like a call-out for how to approach BPM the right way – roll-out the guerrilla app (usually these are around a specific process) with a BPMS.  But when you’re ready to leverage enterprise services and data, you simply add those features to your process, a bit like a layer cake.  In fact, this avoids one of the key failure modes of BPM projects:  trying to cement integrations to early, instead of focusing on getting the actual process right first.

Related posts:

1. The Great Case Management Debate that Wasn’t #BPM11
2. Appian’s Technical Case for Case Management
3. In Case You Missed it: Sandy’s Coverage of Progress Revolution

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!

Related posts:

1. BPM Redux on TIBCO-Nimbus
2. Nice Nimbus Review
3. Tibco’s ActiveMatrix BPM Announcement

With the combination of Metastorm and Global 360, we are now the largest provider of BPM solutions for the Microsoft ecosystem. The BPM solutions complement our existing information governance and archiving solutions for SharePoint and Exchange. But what’s more important, Global 360 increases the critical mass of process management focus inside of OpenText.

(I didn’t know anyone was still blogging on blogger…)

Being the biggest Microsoft BPM partner is sort of like being the biggest Microsoft Cloud partner.  There are bigger players in both markets, with more traction, momentum, and ecosystems.  But being the biggest in the Microsoft ecosystem is probably better than not being the biggest.

Lubor continues:

The Global 360 acquisition is unique, though, as it allows OpenText to not only expand its offerings, but also reach a critical mass needed to establish itself as a serious contender in a new market. This is not a minor matter.

I think this is the key point.  The ECM vendors need the BPM market to revitalize their growth and increase their addressable markets.  It isn’t a bad thing to be strong in both content and process.  Of course, this isn’t just three companies, OpenText + MetaStorm + Global 360.  MetaStorm and Global 360 each had acquired several companies as well, so this is a roll-up of roll-ups and integration challenges are going to be many and diverse.  The interesting questions will be about a year from now-  what is the roadmap for BPM at OpenText, the roadmap for innovation, etc.

Forrester has a quick summary of the acquisition as well:

OpenText is at it again — and another independent BPM provider is gone. This time it’s Global 360. But Global 360 was more than BPM; it had done a good — no, great — job revitalizing what was at its core an ECM rollup of midrange and questionable solutions (remember Kodak, Keyfile — I actually met an original Keyfile developer there — and ViewStar?). But it nurtured this account base well and  built a fast-growing BPM and case management business. It’s now been purchased by the ultimate ECM rollup, OpenText.

Craig Le Clair’s article emphasizes even further what a monumental integration challenge this will be.

Related posts:

1. Bruce Silver’s Perspective on the Global 360 Acquisition
2. OpenText Picks up Global360
3. MWD on Open Text + Global 360

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.

Related posts:

1. A Model’s Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder
2. Caterpillar on stage for IBM at #IBMImpact Day 1
3. Phil Introduces IBM BPM to #IBMImpact on Day 2

• sponsorship
• functional thinking
• business change management (in addition to technical change management)
• internal communications
• consensus tooling and methodology
• expanding beyond the COE
• “how big?”
• building BPM skills

Read the article for the full scoop. These are classic BPM problems and we’ve advised many of our customers on these very issues, so I think we can attest to the relevance of the list.

Related posts:

1. Is BPM Common Sense?
2. Priorities, Skills, and BPM
3. I’ve got one word for you…”BPM”

Turning back to his post: in this article he paints clear lines of demarcation between two points of view that are out there in the market:

1. That BPM is defined as a narrow technical approach
2. That BPM encompasses a wider range of improvement techniques that inform and leverage the technical approach.

Well this cuts right to the heart of the divide between those firms that have successful BPM programs versus those who have projects with a BPM flavor.

Another telling comment:

But each organization needs its own subtle blend of skills, methods, techniques and tools. In a sense, the organization needs to weave its own proprietary method framework — to create its own fabric — a unique approach that reflects its special needs, the maturity of the different business units, their history of change, culture, the current and planned organizational structure (to say nothing of the political challenges).

I could sum this up another way, perhaps less elegantly:  you have to own your own methodology. A great way to do that is to customize the methodology to the particular character of your firm.

Related posts:

1. Derek Miers on Roles
2. Derek Miers’ Elephant (in the room)
3. Austin Entrepreneurship gets another Voice