AWS Step Functions vs IBM BPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

AWS Step Functions
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
12th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
9
Ranking in other categories
Workload Automation (15th)
IBM BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (9th), Process Automation (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of AWS Step Functions is 2.9%, down from 3.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM BPM is 8.8%, up from 7.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
Unique Categories:
Workload Automation
1.1%
Application Infrastructure
3.9%
Process Automation
11.6%
 

Featured Reviews

AB
Jan 29, 2024
Simplifies complex task automation and enhances development workflows while offering user-friendly interface, seamless scalability and efficient workflow orchestration
There could be better integration with IDEs, such as more seamless access to credentials without needing daily updates. Additionally, it would be helpful to have better visibility into Step Functions, such as being able to view parallel executions within the same Step machine. Improved profiling and logging features would also enhance the management of processes. The interface can sometimes feel limited, as we're unable to see what AWS is running behind the scenes. Having a desktop option might provide more detailed information, especially for teams like ours that need to validate multiple sub-functions concurrently. It would be beneficial to see these functions running in parallel for performance validation purposes.
VN
Dec 19, 2023
Easy to use, good price, easy for developers, easy to install and configure
The use cases include security and network processing for internal purposes It streamlines processes, benefits other projects, and integrates with other solutions. I appreciate its high user capacity and standard compliance. It's also helpful for multi-project deployments, design assessments,…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"The integration capability is easy, whereas building state machines is tricky."
"One can rate all the calls and that is a good feature."
"It's Amazon, it's scalable."
"The number of historical events is great."
"What I like the most about Amazon Step Functions is how easy it is to use."
"It's a general solution that you can adapt to your own needs and is simple to use. We like that it can be integrated with everything in the AWS suite, and that the creation of the pipeline can be done using the graphical user interface."
"AWS Step Functions acts as a high-level layer, allowing us to seamlessly integrate with microservices."
"It is a scalable solution."
"IBM's deployment box is one huge black box. We can create all the services with our own code or without a codebase, however, we have a huge amount of space with practically no limitation."
"It is transparent to business users because it is mostly picture based modelling."
"The possibility to add Java code as embedded .jar, that increases the flexibility of the solution."
"The most valuable features come in the bundle, the design process, creating services, creating BPDs, creating coaches, and UI/UX."
"Scalability is good. In the time that I have been there, we have added more JVMs to help with the increased workload, so it does scale."
"Previously, our company's business automation process was slow. IBM BPM's schedule and response functionalities are excellent...There are countless use cases in which IBM BPM proves to be a valuable tool for my clients."
"It is being able to see the process, and understanding what the process is versus having to bury it in code somewhere."
"The case management and its integration with process design are good features."
 

Cons

"Setup took about one day. We had some errors to understand in the beginning, but now everything is working good."
"It is hard to coordinate the declaratory language."
"I would like to see more data transformation features in Amazon Step Functions like additional operators and logic."
"It wasn't easy to understand the licensing model. It's like if you use just a little, it's cheap, but it becomes more expensive as you use more. It's like a hook that ties you inside the Amazon ecosystem. So, it creates a dependency."
"The solution's pricing could be cheaper. It is cheaper than Airflow."
"The interface can sometimes feel limited, as we're unable to see what AWS is running behind the scenes."
"The solution's data size limit can be improved."
"The pricing of the solution can be improved."
"We have had to use Mule as an alternative integration tool because it is more flexible than IBM BPM."
"Process versioning was tricky, not straightforward."
"Where it can be improved is Integration. I think that the direction that IBM is taking now, to have something that is much more integrated, that can be seen as one single solution, is clearly the right way."
"All our clients are changing to microservice and cloud service. However, BPM does not have a solution for microservice and cloud service."
"It is not user-friendly."
"The price and the overall installation process could be improved."
"The debugging needs improvement. There is some confusion surrounding the debugging."
"It is a really powerful tool, but its entry price is so high, which makes it a very exclusive club for who gets to use it. The thing that seemed to be the most intolerable was that you could put lots and lots of users on it, and it worked fine, but if you put lots and lots of developers on it, it sure seemed to have challenges. The biggest challenge was the development because of the Eclipse tool. It just seemed like irrespective of the development team that you put together, whether it had 10 or 50 people, you would end up having to reboot the development server throughout the day when you concurrently had lots of people hammering on the system. The development server just got sluggish. This was true for every project I was on. Once you got more than about five people working on the system at the same time, it would just get slower and slower during development work, and the only way to fix it was to reboot the server. It became just like a routine. Sometimes, we would reboot at lunch or dinner time, which is silly. After the cloud instances started rolling out, I never saw that again. That was probably the one big advantage of the cloud version. Instead of using an independent Eclipse-based process development tool, we moved to web-based process and design. The web-based tool definitely had greater performance than the Eclipse-based tool. I never got onto another project after that with 50 people, so I don't know how the performance is when you get a large team on it, but it definitely seems that the cloud design tool was a massive improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The solution's price is reasonable."
"The solution is expensive."
"It may be cheaper for organizations to pay for the Viewer licenses that are immediately up and running in the cloud, rather than paying for someone to administer publishing to an intranet."
"IBM BPM cannot be considered a cheaply priced product. IBM BPM is a really expensive product compared to other companies. One needs to opt for the perpetual licensing model offered by IBM."
"I rate the tool's pricing a seven out of ten."
"It gives us a good return on investment."
"We chose to purchase IBM BPM because it was bundled with the actual RPA program/solution that we decided to purchase. We decided to use Automation Anywhere tool (RPA), and it is was bundled with IBM BPM."
"It's expensive. All software is always extremely high. The manufacturing cost that we have compared to the selling cost, it's not like you're building a house or building a car. But putting that aside, considering that it's expensive, it's a lot of money. If you compare it with some of the other alternatives in the market, it's a similar price. For instance, if you compare it with Pegasystems, it's a similar price."
"IBM BPM is expensive, so most large companies opt for IBM based on their licensing options."
"IBM could improve the price. It is far too expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
8%
Insurance Company
5%
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about Amazon Step Functions?
The integration capability is easy, whereas building state machines is tricky.
What is your primary use case for Amazon Step Functions?
The major feature of AWS Step Functions is interdependency. Step Functions can determine what action to take next if one step returns a false status based on predefined logic. Step Functions aims t...
What advice do you have for others considering Amazon Step Functions?
For Step Functions error handling, one must use function calls and logging for error detection within state machines. Comparatively, AirFlow offers more room for improvement. It's like drag and dro...
Which is better, IBM BPM or IBM Business Automation Workflow?
We researched both IBM solutions and in the end, we chose Business Automation Workflow. IBM BPM has a good user interface and the BPM coach is a helpful tool. The API is very useful in providing en...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM BPM?
The solution might be expensive, but I can't give you a precise number. In the market here, I've seen two main products for BPM: IBM BPM and Camunda. Camunda is very popular and open-source, so the...
 

Also Known As

Amazon Step Functions, Step Functions
WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Alpha Apps, The Guardian, SGK, Bigfinite
Barclays, EmeriCon, Banca Popolare di Milano, CST Consulting, KeyBank, KPMG, Prolifics, Sandhata Technologies Ltd., State of Alaska, Humana S.A., Saperion, esciris, Banco Espirito Santo
Find out what your peers are saying about AWS Step Functions vs. IBM BPM and other solutions. Updated: July 2024.
793,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.