BPM in the Cloud with SaaS
This post is my last in a series of posts examining past trends in the learning management software market to understand future trends in business process management.
Over the last year or so, the buzz has been over cloud computing. The online training software industry embraced cloud computing when it was called Software-as-a-Service (SaaS). Increasingly, companies began outsourcing the hosting of their leaning management systems, rather than installing and maintaining a licensed copy of software. Some companies, such as GeoLearning and Learn.com, were purely SaaS companies that only offered a hosted LMS. Other traditional LMS companies began offering an SaaS version of their software.
One factor that drove this trend was a change in market dynamics. Many larger companies with deep pockets had already invested in an LMS and switching costs made them reluctant to switch vendors. Newcomers to the LMS market, as well as market leaders who wanted to maintain and grow market share, found small to medium sized businesses to be an attractive target. Cloud computing offered these companies, who often had little internal IT support, lower total cost of ownership and automatic software upgrades. Of course, cloud computing has its disadvantages. For example, SaaS offerings are often less customizable than licensed software.
Does cloud computing in online training software foretell anything for the BPM industry? In 2007 Lombardi software introduced Blueprint™ as an on-demand business process management solution. Appian began funding its SaaS venture in 2008. (Learn.com, one of the leading SaaS LMS vendors began in 2001). The business process management industry’s adoption certainly seems as though it is headed in the direction of SaaS.
However, BPM customers may not adopt SaaS as readily as LMS customers have. Ovum analyst, Surya Mukherjee, says that SaaS products tend to be strong in visualization and design but weak in workflow engine and execution (Barry). (Blueprint is a process discovery product.) Unlike online training software, business process management software in the cloud can expose more sensitive data to a security risk. For SaaS to become as ubiquitous in the BPM market, as it has in the LMS market, managers will need to feel more comfortable with the security of cloud computing.
