F5 BIG-IQ vs IBM BPM comparison

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393 views|164 comparisons
77% willing to recommend
IBM Logo
6,050 views|4,659 comparisons
90% willing to recommend
Comparison Buyer's Guide
Executive Summary

We performed a comparison between F5 BIG-IQ and IBM BPM based on real PeerSpot user reviews.

Find out in this report how the two Process Automation solutions compare in terms of features, pricing, service and support, easy of deployment, and ROI.
To learn more, read our detailed F5 BIG-IQ vs. IBM BPM Report (Updated: March 2024).
767,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.
Featured Review
Quotes From Members
We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use.
Here are some excerpts of what they said:
Pros
"Scalability: To move from larger boxes to smaller boxes, along with virtualization. So, we are not locked into a particular size.""F5 BIG-IQ reduces the propensity for error.""The backup, monitoring and logging are the best features.""F5 BIG-IQ has always provided us with great support.""We use this solution on a daily basis, and it is very stable.""The best aspect of the solution is that we can have everything integrated with a rather large capacity in order to personalize and configure specific rules.""Features like AFM, the gateway, and Global DNS are the coolest features that save work for us.""The most valuable features are load balancing and WAF."

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"Initially, the process architecture studio was very helpful and it was compliant with BPMN standards.""They have some quick-win programs that are designed to come in, they'll bring a developer in and they'll work with your developer to get you started. That's what we did and that worked really great. We got an understanding of the product, we got an understanding of how to deploy the product. And when we were done with that engagement, we were off and running.""The installation was straightforward.""The Process Designer is good. We like how we can drag and drop and link the processes up, that works out great for us.""Automating the whole workflow process to give our data steward the ability to take actions rapidly, and making sure we have all the data synced within the different platforms that we are using.""This is one of the best tools to support the business and the way we work, and the numerous processes we need to implement.""Its most valuable features are usability and integration with other IBM products.""It helps improve your process through continual measurement."

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Cons
"F5 BIG-IQ is a complex solution, and it cannot manage everything related to BIG-IPs.""The shell, kernel, or Linux has something like a delay, especially with the Virtual Edition, when you are trying to implement it in the cloud and you want to access it remotely with web management. It would be great if they could improve their kernel. It was difficult for me, especially when I got started with BIG-IP. I was struggling to find which commands work with it. If you want to work with it, you have to be a Linux guy.""I had trouble with high availability deployment in my environment.""There are a lot of scripts available on the internet for people who know how to use them, but with a graphical interface, it would be easier for new users.""The solution's rSeries has been made free, and iSeries should be made free as well.""Sometimes the solution does not work.""The solution should improve pricing. It's expensive in comparison to other American solutions.""Integration with VAS is something that they need to work on."

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"The solution can improve integration with SAP, CRM, and Salesforce, which is not capital-intensive.""I would like IBM to consider including AI-enabled process mining, robotic process automation, and very good OCR capabilities from the computer vision side.""The front end is not customised for a good user experience.""We had hoped that the product would provide us with plug-ins like Salesforce. Its development environment needs to improve. We expect to see elastic features like containerization. We don't just need an on-prem virtual machine.""We thought there might have been a little more discussion early on about, "Hey, if you're doing this, set it up this way," or some best practices or some guidance that we didn't get.""The setup was quite complex because the solution was cutting-edge at that time and IBM invested considerably in the implementation, likely at a loss to themselves.""We have been experiencing bad performance and instability.""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."

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Pricing and Cost Advice
  • "I would like the product to be cheaper."
  • "There is only one licensing fee for F5 BIG-IQ and everything is included in the price."
  • "F5 BIG-IQ is a cheap solution."
  • "Users have to pay an annual subscription fee for the solution's iSeries."
  • More F5 BIG-IQ Pricing and Cost Advice →

  • "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."
  • "Starting out with Express can also help reduce the cost for adopting the product."
  • "​We have definitely seen ROI. When we first kicked it off, we said it had to pay for itself within three years, and it did."
  • "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."
  • "Our customers do see ROI. They'll identify some particularly painful or uncoordinated processes to start with, then build out from there, picking off low hanging fruit."
  • "It has a low cost to implement. You'll get your money back in the same year that you complete the project."
  • "The cloud and license of the subscription model for IBM BPM can be complex. There are a lot of alternatives to choose from."
  • More IBM BPM Pricing and Cost Advice →

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    Questions from the Community
    Top Answer:F5 BIG-IQ is a central management system for the BIG-IP.
    Top Answer:F5 BIG-IQ is a complex solution, and it cannot manage everything related to BIG-IPs. It's a little bit complex with respect to statistics gathering.
    Top Answer: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… more »
    Top Answer:The product is expensive considering the hardware and software costs.
    Ranking
    22nd
    out of 66 in Process Automation
    Views
    393
    Comparisons
    164
    Reviews
    4
    Average Words per Review
    321
    Rating
    7.0
    5th
    out of 66 in Process Automation
    Views
    6,050
    Comparisons
    4,659
    Reviews
    24
    Average Words per Review
    417
    Rating
    7.7
    Comparisons
    Also Known As
    WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
    Learn More
    Overview

    F5® BIG-IQ® Centralized Management provides a unified point of visibility and control for the entire F5 portfolio, ensuring administrators remain aware on the pulse of F5 devices, modules, and licenses and enabling them to deliver optimal application availability, performance, and security.

    BIG-IQ manages policies,licenses, SSL certificates, BIG-IP images, and configurations for F5 appliances and for the following BIG-IP moduals across hardware and virtual editions:

    • BIG-IP Local Traffic Manager™ (LTM)
    • F5 Advanced Web Application Firewall™ (WAF)
    • BIG-IP Advanced Firewall Manager™ (AFM)
    • F5 SSL Orchestrator®
    • F5 DDoS Hybrid Defender®
    • BIG-IP Access Policy Manager® (APM)
    • F5 Secure Web Gateway Services
    • BIG-IP DNS

    IBM BPM is a business process management tool that provides a robust set of tools to author, test, and deploy business processes, as well as full visibility and insight to managing those business processes. The solution provides tooling and run time for process design, execution, monitoring, and optimization, along with basic system integration support. To support various levels of complexity and involvement with business process management, there are two different editions of the product: IBM BPM and IBM BPM Express.

    IBM BPM Features

    IBM BPM has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

    • Process designer authoring tool
    • Collaborative editing and immediate playback of processes
    • Interactive user interfaces
    • Process rules based on IBM Operational Decision Manager
    • IBM Integration Designer (BPEL and SOA)
    • Designing and building case management systems
    • Process portal
    • Real-time monitoring and reporting
    • Performance analytics and optimizer
    • Performance data warehouse
    • IBM Process Center with a shared asset repository
    • IBM Process Federation Server
    • Built-in enterprise service bus (ESB)
    • Transaction support
    • Integration adapters
    • Network deployment support
    • High availability: clustering and unlimited cores

    IBM BPM Benefits

    There are many benefits to implementing IBM BPM. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

    • Increased efficiency and cost savings: IBM BPM can help you optimize existing processes and incorporate more structure into the development of new processes by removing process redundancies and bottlenecks.
    • More scalable processes: The solution enables better process execution and workflow automation, which transfers well when scaling processes.
    • Greater transparency: Because IBM BPM’s process automation clearly defines owners for tasks along the process, it provides more transparency and accountability throughout a given process. In turn, this fosters more communication among teams.
    • Less dependency on development teams: IBM BPM offers low-code features which remove potential dependencies on development. Business users can be onboarded onto these tools quickly and easily, thereby increasing process automation across the company.

    Reviews from Real Users

    IBM BPM is a solution that stands out when compared to many of its competitors. Some of its major advantages are that it’s good for developing complex apps, is robust, and has helpful team management and process performance features.

    Zoran C., Owner/CEO at IT SPHERE, says, “It is perfect if you have to develop complex apps without much coding (only java script). It is also good if you don't have much IT resources in your company and would like to involve business analysts in the process of developing apps. My opinion is that it can do about 50% of all developers' work.”

    Suhas V., BPM Architect at GBM, mentions, “Overall the solution is robust and has the ability to integrate with any product for complex workflows."

    A BPM Consultant at a financial services firm comments, "Some of the features that I like the most are team management and process performance. They are both very useful and very powerful with regard to the workflow."

    A Digital Banking & Innovation Director at a financial services firm expresses, “The processing functionality makes it easy to change processes and workflows easily.”

    Sample Customers
    Information Not Available
    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
    Top Industries
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Computer Software Company14%
    Financial Services Firm10%
    Manufacturing Company9%
    Insurance Company9%
    REVIEWERS
    Financial Services Firm57%
    Computer Software Company17%
    Insurance Company10%
    Real Estate/Law Firm3%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Financial Services Firm29%
    Computer Software Company13%
    Manufacturing Company7%
    Retailer6%
    Company Size
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business58%
    Midsize Enterprise25%
    Large Enterprise17%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business16%
    Midsize Enterprise11%
    Large Enterprise74%
    REVIEWERS
    Small Business26%
    Midsize Enterprise15%
    Large Enterprise59%
    VISITORS READING REVIEWS
    Small Business17%
    Midsize Enterprise12%
    Large Enterprise71%
    Buyer's Guide
    F5 BIG-IQ vs. IBM BPM
    March 2024
    Find out what your peers are saying about F5 BIG-IQ vs. IBM BPM and other solutions. Updated: March 2024.
    767,319 professionals have used our research since 2012.

    F5 BIG-IQ is ranked 22nd in Process Automation with 12 reviews while IBM BPM is ranked 5th in Process Automation with 105 reviews. F5 BIG-IQ is rated 7.4, while IBM BPM is rated 7.8. The top reviewer of F5 BIG-IQ writes "A central management system to manage and monitor a bunch of different BIG-IP devices". On the other hand, the top reviewer of IBM BPM writes "Offers good case management and its integration with process design but there's a learning curve". F5 BIG-IQ is most compared with ServiceNow Orchestration, whereas IBM BPM is most compared with Camunda, Pega BPM, Appian, IBM Business Automation Workflow and Apache Airflow. See our F5 BIG-IQ vs. IBM BPM report.

    See our list of best Process Automation vendors.

    We monitor all Process Automation reviews to prevent fraudulent reviews and keep review quality high. We do not post reviews by company employees or direct competitors. We validate each review for authenticity via cross-reference with LinkedIn, and personal follow-up with the reviewer when necessary.