Worldwide Business Process Management (BPM) Market Opportunities Strategies, and Forecasts, 2009 to 2015
WinterGreen Research, Inc., June 2009, Pages: 609
Systems are poised for significant growth as Web based applications are used to implement automated process. A business process management system has many aspects related to a range of industries moving to leverage the Internet as a channel.
Real time analysis of information is being used to position companies to achieve competitive advantage. Cloud computing is a central aspect of the BPM initiative, providing up to date information in a usable format. Companies are implementing BPM solutions in the context of cloud computing that provides syntax to business users.
The BPM syntax is used in a model driven architecture at the line of business. This comes from an engine that is worked on all year long by IT. In this way, business analysts have access to BPM models that run without coding. Scalability and enterprise wide solution sets are achieving significant competitive advantage and improvements in productivity. Response to competition means adjusting unique enterprise resources to address opportunities and respond to change in markets. Needs and demands are integral to an integration infrastructure systems implementation.
According to Susan Eustis, lead author of the study, "innovation drives market growth in every industry, and innovation depends on implementation of automated business process in every instance. IBM, Oracle, and Adobe are among market leaders. IBM is able to leverage its SOA market dominance to support innovation, providing software that supports flexible response to changing market conditions." SOA reaches into every industry and every segment of the economy. SOA drives innovation for the very large enterprises, now the mid range size companies and very small organizations are adopting technologies similar to what the enterprise use, creating automated process to replace manual process.
Business process management promises to drive enterprise markets going forward by implementing automated process more efficiently. Automation of business process must be balanced with human exception management, which is managed by workflow. Business processes are enhanced by the ability to interconnect a range of different applications systems including general ledger, order entry, inventory, process control, and human resources.
Integration of Internet servers that implement e-business with partners and open a new sales channel depend on BPM systems. Areas of demand within the enterprise include financial services, customer relationship management, e-government and ebusiness.
Financial companies use automated business process to manage the automation of systems. Manufacturing companies use BPM to automate the supply chain. BPM depends on having the nodes of different applications achieve communication in a timely manner. If information is lost in a node, or bottlenecks occur, the BPM systems need to know that there are delays and send alerts to people denoted in the rules engines. BPM systems tend to be sophisticated implementations of process management, highly dependent of alert generation in a timely manner.
Customer response and supply chain modules represent significant aspects of business process management (BPM). BPM has achieved the ability to manage human interactions for process and to achieve application to application process implementation. Attaching information to rules in an automated manner means existing business IT systems can operate more efficiently.
Automation efficiency depends on process efficiency. Utility companies do not want to spend the $6 billion to replace the existing IT system and endure the associated risk, they simply want to upgrade the existing CRM module so that the outage calls are handled more efficiently. This involves SOA systems integration implemented as BPM.
The integration needed to interconnect the CRM module to the IT core business system depends on process that is an essential aspect of new workload implementations.
The level of integration required a core broker that is available from IBM or Tibco and is not so easily managed by BPM companies with less integration core broker functionality. This gives these integration companies market strength. Adobe achieves its BPM market strength from document integration that then automates process.
BPM market driving forces relate to the need for automation of process. Information exchange depends on access to every different type of enterprise resource planning (ERP) system and network connectivity. Supply chains are automated using BPM technology based on integration infrastructure. Electronic commerce needs application servers and integration infrastructure to function.
Customer service systems need BPM to be implemented efficiently. Long running processes can be supported in a number of ways, but BPM is most efficient. Indirect factors relate to the migration of existing products from separate market segments. File transfer, CTI, applications development, and workflow illustrate the alternate ways to implement long running processes.
BPM is utilizing the architectures of SOA to develop component architecture in a manner that is consistent with efficient operations. Components do not work in tightly coupled stacks, they work as componentized aggregates of core functionality. The WebSphere MQ messaging broker is able to create separate, but equal aggregations of functionality that are kicked off as unique business processes built from components.
SOA does not work well in a stack, the components are no longer independent or reusable in a stack. SOA componentized architectures depend on asynchronous messaging that moves information as messages.
Services oriented architecture SOA is occurring in the context of corporate adoption of best-of-breed BPM strategies. Mergers, acquisitions, and reorganizations are increasing. The driving force is the need to leverage economies of scale brought by the Internet. A desire to develop closer links with customers, suppliers, and partners is also evolving. These events all drive demand for BPM. Applications, databases, operating systems, and hardware platforms depend on integration infrastructure and middleware messaging. Application servers blend seamlessly into networks supporting mainframes, client/server platforms, and PCs.
Companies trying to merge IT departments following a merger or acquisition need integration infrastructure. Those involved in front office/back office integration and those working to comply with new regulations all face the need to implement integration. BPM is emerging as a layer above integration infrastructure that guides process automation once integration has been put in place. Growth comes from the value provided by automated process. Automated process is at the heart of every enterprise. It is possible to run a very small business using manual process, say a small trucking firm using hand loading techniques, but try running a large distribution centre or airline shipping package delivery service without automated process. It is not possible.
BPM promises to do more to eliminate manual process and give us control over exception management so that human intervention happens in an intelligent, efficient manner when it is needed. BPM has significant growth prospects for many years to come as markets are not anywhere near saturated.
All the BPM vendors have the capability to combine and recombine SOA components to create new processes using various aspects of model driven development tools. This use of SOA component driven architecture is set to spawn a new era of business optimization bringing massive amounts of productivity improvements.
As the productivity improves, fewer people are needed to perform jobs and the economy depends on innovation. Innovation is likely to come from renewable energy products that provide virtually free, virtually ubiquitous solar and wind generated energy.
With virtually free, universally available energy, the economy will enter a new era of innovation. In this instance, the culture of the US will provide enormous competitive advantage, because people are free to try new things without the fear of failure. Electric vehicles will proliferate, with every individual buying 3 or more personal vehicles. Just as a few years ago it was impossible to think about a person have more than one TV per household and now people have a TV in every room, so also people will have road cars, commuting cars, and family vehicles. All this will drive economic growth.
Solar and wind energy installations will require automated process for the smart grid. While thin film batteries proliferate to store the locally generated energy for personal vehicles, appliances, and lighting, the grid will provide significant amounts of energy as it does now, but from many different energy sources. Personal responsibility for healthcare will be a significant innovation in the automation of process for medical care, providing significant change to the electronic patient record.
Business process management (BPM) and services oriented architecture engine markets at $1.8 billion for licenses, maintenance, and services in 2008 are expected to reach $6.2 billion by 2015. Products have a dashboard that supports ease of use for business analysts. The automation of process is what drives profitability for the enterprise.
Report Methodology
This is the 410th report in a series of market research reports that provide forecasts in communications, telecommunications, the internet, computer, software, and telephone equipment. The project leaders take direct responsibility for writing and preparing each report. They have significant experience preparing industry studies. Forecasts are based on primary research and proprietary data bases. Forecasts reflect analysis of the market trends in the segment and related segments. Unit and dollar shipments are analyzed through consideration of dollar volume of each market participation in the segment. Market share analysis includes conversations with key customers of products, industry segment leaders, marketing directors, distributors, leading market participants, and companies seeking to develop measurable market share. Over 200 in-depth interviews are conducted for each report with a broad range of key participants and opinion leaders in the market segment.
