BPM applications have always been hard for Analyst firms like Gartner and Forrester to properly position. A few years back I remember a Gartner analyst saying that BPM applications could be positioned anywhere from “Peak of Inflated Expectation” to “plateau of productivity” depending on which metrics you used.

figure 1 : Hype Cycle by Gartner : “Peak of Inflated Expectation” to “plateau of productivity” 

I know well from experience that one of the big “thorn in the foot” of BPM has been the lack of competent developers. Proper BPM needs the flexibility of coding but most developers find it difficult to integrate a BPM/Workflow Management System in there development paradigm ( basically they prefer coding around the tool ) unless they are properly guided and informed.

It was always a surprise to me that BPM/Workflow Management Systems were not more readily used to resolve integration complexity. Instead most accounts have preferred to “data integrate” there environment by consolidating there data. The other solution would have been to use BPM. You see with BPM you can run a single process through an heterogeneous application landscape calling anything from SAP transactions to Microsoft documents passing by Oracle applications ( while your process listens to Twitter for queues ! ), this means you can keep an heterogeneous landscape working seamlessly without the need for Data or Application consolidation.

Today with the need for hyper reactivity to “data and social media events” BPM feels ever more necessary. BPM tools allow for the configuration of Process and Business rules, on top of this the configuration is lean and agile you can change these rules in minutes ! Imagine a solution that allows you to take certain decisions based on a Twitter feed ( any IOT feed in fact ), with BPM you can do this and the decision can be made by a human being as well as by a machine, its still your choice (-; !

Here the Best In Show Presentations for 2015 at BPMNext earlier this year by SAP, its all about IOT, BPM and FIORI