Blog: Craig Schiff

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August 23, 2007

The Future Looks Bright for BPM

I recently met with the executives responsible for defining the product roadmaps at SAP/OutlookSoft and Business Objects/Cartesis. I am very impressed with what I heard. While many of the details discussed are still confidential, there are certain observations I can share. For starters, the executives in charge of these decisions are precisely the right people for the job. In both instances they have a depth and breadth of performance management expertise that is hard to match. These are not political appointments or rushed into mistakes made after a major merger. These guys (and women) know their stuff. Most surprising to me is the recognition by management of the true strengths and weaknesses of each component of their combined product set.

While the roadmaps are still a work in progress, especially the details of the later stages, they already demonstrate a willingness to make the tough decisions. There is little favoritism shown to the existing pre-acquisition modules versus the newly acquired ones. In contrast to the initial 'all products will live forever' pronouncements the roadmaps spell out how and when certain modules will fade out. Both vendors have plans to cease marketing what they (and I) view as the weaker of the overlapping modules, enhance the stronger, and in some cases merge the two to create a superset of their combined functionality. As far as integration goes, its a multi-stage process. The first phase is an integrated data model while later phases focus on the UI and a unified user experience. Full integration is probably a 12-18 month process from the merger date. Both Business Objects and SAP have focused the majority of their sales and marketing efforts on IT in the past. As evidence that they truly understand what they have acquired they both say they will be focusing their performance management efforts on the office of the CFO. As far as future plans go they both laid out visions that are fairly consistent with BPM Partners 2.0 and beyond framework including an operational focus and the inclusion of true enterprise risk management. I believe both of these vendors are on the right path to deliver exceptional all-encompassing BPM suites. Now it all comes down to execution.

Technorati tags: Business Objects, Cartesis, OutlookSoft, SAP

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