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  Cloud Computing aka SaaS for Business Process Management

  kurt 4:47 pm on March 4, 2010 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: BPM (20), business process management (5), business process management software (7), Cloud Computing (2), SaaS BPM (2), Software as Service (2), Software-as-Service BPM

  
  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.

   

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  BPM and SaaS - All the Hype

  brian 1:04 pm on July 24, 2008 | 0 Permalink | Reply
  Tags: Derek Miers, Hosted BPM, SaaS BPM (2), Software as Service (2), Software-as-Service BPM

  Is it just me or does it seem like everyone is talking about BPM and SaaS again. Late last year Derek Miers blogged about the work he did preparing a training video for the Appian hosted offering. I wonder how that is going for Appian? Do they really have any clients using their hosted offering? And what are they going to tell their existing corporate clients to keep them from migrating to their own cheaper hosted services?

  These were the same questions everyone had for companies like Oracle and Siebel when SalesForce.com came out with hosted CRM. The question became even tougher when SugarCRM began attacking wielding an Open Source + SaaS combo strategy - the two largest threats to traditional ISVs.

  Many of the smarter traditional ISVs seemed to realize this was a better time to acquire than to build. Look at Business Objects acquisition of Nsite. The consensus seemed to be that it is easier for a successful larger player to acquire rowdier upstarts that are experimenting with newer delivery models than it is for a traditional software company to risk cannibalizing its own businesses by trying to be everything to everybody. Today’s BPM players might want to review these case studies. Some seem to simply prefer to burry their new hosted offering deep inside the web page hinting at the fact that management either isn’t very committed to SaaS or just couldn’t make up its mind.

  ProcessMaker is probably the oldest living BPM SaaS company around today. This is an interesting footnote in an industry that seems to jump around trying to feed off of the hype of other industries. Afterall BPM has never been as cool as social networking, wikis, or blogs - it just hasn’t. So, in many ways the SaaS bandwagon is all about just that - jumping on a cool bandwagon.

  If you are jumping on a bandwagon, you aren’t much of a leader and if you aren’t leading, well…you’re following. ProcessMaker started offering BPM Software-as-Service in 2004, and we’ve been learning, growing, and modifying our software ever since. We’ve had completely clientless software since we started with BPM - something that many of our competitors are just now “trying” to do.

  Yes, SaaS is growing for BPM. However, it is not there yet. This means it is going to be a tough play for companies that want to straddle the divide so to speak. And, then when you have BPM double plays like ProcessMaker that are OPEN SOUCE + SaaS, the landscape becomes even more difficult to navigate for a traditional ISV that wants to sell expensive, encrypted BPM licenses. In five more years, that simply won’t be possible.