We performed a comparison between IBM BPM and IBM WebSphere Application Server based on real PeerSpot user reviews.
Find out in this report how the two Application Infrastructure solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI."I would say that I like its GUI designer the best."
"IBM BPM is stable."
"The most valuable features come in the bundle, the design process, creating services, creating BPDs, creating coaches, and UI/UX."
"Responsive Portal + Process Federation Server. This set of solutions offers a unified worklist to our customers."
"The possibility to add Java code as embedded .jar, that increases the flexibility of the solution."
"IBM BPM is equipped with all the functionalities which are needed for building BPM enterprise-level applications."
"It is easy to take a requirement, put it in the code, and deploy it."
"It's a solid product. It covers most of the pain points for clients."
"The scalability of the product is quite good."
"As compared to other applications, it has tremendous support. We have built internal capability so that we use it extensively internally. It is also easier to use with the outside data. You can write in ESQL, Java, or any other technology that you want to use for development. So, it is a lot more flexible in the language that it supports."
"What's most valuable in IBM WebSphere Application Server is its resilience. When you use the solution, you know that after the communication has been done, there will be no doubt that the data has reached its destination."
"The solution is robust. The connection management and the scalability, which IBM provides to the Stack, are also valuable."
"Starting with version 8, WAS provides a special folder called monitor deployment. Once you put the .war or .ear file in there, it is deployed automatically without human intervention. This greatly helps us in our continuous integration server. Once the deployment binary is ready, we write a script to copy it to that folder and then, voila! The application is up and running and accessible from its context root."
"This solution is easy to use with a GUI that is intuitive and very helpful."
"Ease of administration: It has an Integrated Solutions Console, what we call the administrative console, with very detailed configurations and Help pages for each configurable item."
"The thing about WebSphere, as opposed to other ones that I am aware of such as JBoss and Liberty, is that WebSphere has the most comprehensive scaffolding available to it."
"The cost of the solution has room for improvement."
"All our clients are changing to microservice and cloud service. However, BPM does not have a solution for microservice and cloud service."
"We thought there might have been a little more discussion early on about, "Hey, if you're doing this, set it up this way," or some best practices or some guidance that we didn't get."
"The engine itself tends to accumulate a lot of data that needs to be cleaned up, and that's the kind of thing that keeps it from, in some scenarios, scaling as much as it needs to. And then, when you're building solutions, if you're not careful to keep the screens from being associated with too much data, if you're going to just do things the way that a lot of people would just assume that they can do, without having experience of having made those mistakes before, it will accumulate a lot of data, and that will cause it to perform very badly."
"The product is extremely complex to use and administrate."
"The initial setup was complex."
"One of the things that we are looking at is cognitive learning. IBM has another product called IBM RPA, I think, which is doing some of that stuff. We would like to see more of that with respect to cognitive learning and AI put back into the process engine to help."
"We had hoped that the product would provide us with plug-ins like Salesforce. Its development environment needs to improve. We expect to see elastic features like containerization. We don't just need an on-prem virtual machine."
"They should make the solution more lightweight and not bundle everything into a single product."
"The solution could improve the integration."
"IBM needs to pay attention to market changes more quickly. We now have Java 9 and very soon Java EE8. We do not want to wait for two or three years after their release until they are supported by the new version."
"Initial setup is very simple. Just use the IBM Installation Manager and add the packages. The install wizard takes care of the rest. The only thing that can be difficult is to find the right packages on the IBM website, because of all the changes that IBM does on its website(s)."
"The availability of the solution needs improvement."
"The business logic side of it is sort of missing in the sense that if I want to track and measure velocity, it is not really available. You have to buy another application and embark on a separate implementation. Instead of having different licensing, IBM DataPower should be integrated with WebSphere. It will allow us to build the business layer and rules a lot more efficiently, rather than developing rules within the application. It would be good if we can set up the business layer through parametrization rather than development. IBM DataPower has the business rule and the controls, and if it can be integrated, it would be fantastic. It will help the application in working better in terms of security features and business logic. If you're going to use it for open banking, you will be able to monitor velocity on the total pricing."
"IBM WebSphere Application Server hasn't changed much. It's still a heavyweight for any company compared to what you get. Unless your code base is deeply linked with it, I don't think it's a great idea to go with this solution. The current trend is toward modularity and containerization, and given the product's requirements, containerization will be difficult. There is a memory requirement as well."
"In the next release of this solution, I would like to see support for the Arabic language."
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IBM BPM is ranked 7th in Application Infrastructure with 105 reviews while IBM WebSphere Application Server is ranked 5th in Application Infrastructure with 26 reviews. IBM BPM is rated 7.8, while IBM WebSphere Application Server is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of IBM BPM writes "Offers good case management and its integration with process design but there's a learning curve". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM WebSphere Application Server writes "Compatible, stable, and scalable". IBM BPM is most compared with Camunda, Appian, Pega BPM, IBM Business Automation Workflow and Oracle BPM, whereas IBM WebSphere Application Server is most compared with JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, JBoss, Tomcat, Oracle WebLogic Server and IBM DataPower Gateway. See our IBM BPM vs. IBM WebSphere Application Server report.
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