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."Setting it up is fairly easy. If somebody has knowledge of the system, he or she will be able to do it fairly quickly."
"Scalability is good. In the time that I have been there, we have added more JVMs to help with the increased workload, so it does scale."
"I think the best way it can be it improved, is to make it easier to install. It's a very complicated piece of software, and there are a lot of things you have to do to get it set up. It's not just running an installer. You install WebSphere. You install the BPM product, and there's a large host of other steps you have to do: run queries against the database, you have to manually configure a bunch of properties files for your environment. I think if they could streamline all that, so it wasn't a considerable effort to install, that would be very useful. Because from an engineering point of view, you want to spend as little time as possible actually installing a product."
"The performance is fine."
"IBM BPM's best features include document sharing, management document creation, widget and barcode creation, and integration."
"The solution offers great notifications."
"One of the most notable things is how you can develop use cases with the customers, internal customers, but directly within. The software process model that BPM supports is really exciting in that aspect."
"Agility is the key. It gives our customers a faster way to be able to implement processes, get ownership of task, visibility into a process. The ability to modify that process, optimize that process over time, is probably the biggest benefit that they get from the software."
"One of the most valuable features might be the stability of the IBM WebSphere Application Server."
"Security: It is compatible with the latest Java 8 security features, supports FIPS 140-2 and NIST SP 800-53 with strong ciphers and cryptography keys, and supports TLS 1.2 completely. Also, configuring client and server certificates is relatively easy."
"The most valuable features are its user-friendliness and reliability in terms of application hosting."
"The VPN service is quite useful."
"The scalability of the product is quite good."
"The only reason why we're currently using WebSphere is that the integration of the authentication with Azure is very quick. WebSphere has something that can immediately connect with Azure Active Directory."
"This solution is easy to use with a GUI that is intuitive and very helpful."
"Without the Admin Console it would be very hard to configure JVM settings, JDBC datasources, mail session settings, and security providers."
"New users will need at least six months to get comfortable with IBM BPM, at least initially. So, there's a learning curve."
"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."
"We need process monitoring. It is somewhat complex to monitor all the processes which work."
"It is not user-friendly."
"I'm hearing things might be improving, to really deliver on BPM as opposed to simply workflow. That really should be emphasized a lot more than it has been, because a lot of customers will simply implement the process and leave it there, because the product maybe doesn't emphasize BPM as much as it should, as much as maybe they talk about it in the sales process. The whole idea of BPM, is to iteratively improve the process, and in order to do that you have to have the analytics tool with it. A lot of times that doesn't go as far as it should simply because there's a lot more work to be done for that to happen, and just some sort of technical limitations that don't make that as easy as it should be."
"The business would like to use the product with a lot less IT and equipment involvement."
"We are a government organization, and we are the largest government power sector in India. We generate around 30% of power in India. Therefore, our processes are quite complex. Although IBM BPM is a low-code or no-code software, if you want to have extremely complex workflows, just the business process diagrams are not helpful in creating those workflows. While implementing complex workflows, only the process flow diagrams did not help us. We had to write a lot of Java scripts and Java queries to achieve what we wanted. Its integration capabilities with the SAP environment have to be improved. At present, we are only talking at the web services environment level. Its price also needs to be improved. It is currently expensive. Previously, Active Directory required a heterogeneous environment, but now they want a homogeneous environment. We had onboarded employees through Microsoft Active Directory, and now I have to implement Microsoft AD only from the cloud for my vendors."
"I believe that if the license were cheaper, it would have a greater impact."
"In the next release of this solution, I would like to see support for the Arabic language."
"Some things are very difficult to do, so the interface and usage could be more intuitive for those."
"When we run into memory or locking issues, we resort to using third-party tools. However, it would be preferable to have native tools for debugging this type of problem."
"I think that this is a good product but I think that the cloud environment could be improved. I think that the future is in the utilization of the product in a product as a service way which is something that is lacking at this moment."
"The main issue we faced was its limited compatibility with non-Java technologies, which can result in difficulty detecting potential bugs and requiring additional integration efforts."
"In spite of the solution's robustness, it is expensive and a bit difficult to support."
"Based on the field and based on the build that was provided, we've noticed a lot of constraints in terms of the performance now."
"While WebSphere mostly supports IBM HTTP Server (IHS) as the web server plugin, I think it would be beneficial if it also supported Apache and NGINX web servers. That would give customers more flexibility in their choices."
More IBM WebSphere Application Server Pricing and Cost Advice →
IBM BPM is ranked 6th 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 Nintex Process Platform, whereas IBM WebSphere Application Server is most compared with JBoss Enterprise Application Platform, JBoss, Tomcat, Oracle WebLogic Server and HCL Digital Experience. See our IBM BPM vs. IBM WebSphere Application Server report.
See our list of best Application Infrastructure vendors.
We monitor all Application Infrastructure reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.