BPM Vendor Mash Up: Lombardi is Acquired by IBM

The BPM market is expected to increase at a compounded annual growth rate of 15% over the next four years, according to the IDC; however, IBM's announcement on Wednesday of their acquisition of Lombardi Software is a clear indicator of the economic struggles and the hardships of some of the venture-owned firms.  Lombardi will become part of IBM's WebSphere team, adding to the company's already very similar and numerous product offerings.

In first reactions of Neil Ward-Dutton, a MWD and IT Analyst, it was noted that while there is almost a 100% product overlap, what's more is how the "design philosophy of Lombardi's offering is almost diametrically opposed to that of IBM's offering". How the two products will merge to create a sensible, robust portfolio is unclear, unless plans are in place to maintain each product separately and support different approaches to process management; Lombardi being geared towards human centric process management and a departmental focus, and IBM's WebSphere focused on systems centric process management. Even that approach becomes clouded as Bruce Silver commented in his response to the IBM briefing: "BPM involves process (Websphere), information (FileNet), and people (Lombardi). Now we have a separate BPMS for each of those. Isn't that great? Ummm, no."

Supporting multiple BPM approaches that rely on integration can be a daunting task and certainly requires a high level of maintenance. What can prove to be more frustrating is the actual road to achieving complete integration between the various BPM suites and technology platforms. Often with multiple offerings and stacks, more questions arise than answers, and the value is lost in the complexity of an IT-controlled environment.

As the acquisition follows through and IBM begins to absorb Lombardi, challenges may arise in producing and growing new value to customers and prospects.  It will be interesting to see how much of Lombardi's BPM offering becomes assimilated into IBM's stack, and how much this assimilation brings rigidity to the "smaller company" mentality.  Smaller companies do have conveniences that larger companies do not, such as higher levels of intimacy with customers and more flexibility in product road-mapping changes.  Moreover, from a BPM value proposition, one more wonder if the larger company product mentality of "enterprise" becomes more of the overriding theme with Lombardi's products in the future (compared to emphasizing the departmental-level approach).

Chris Adams
VP Product and Technology
Ultimus