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IBM BPM vs IBM Business Automation Workflow vs Red Hat Polymita Business Suite comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 6.9%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Business Automation Workflow is 2.2%, down from 2.3% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Red Hat Polymita Business Suite is 0.1%, down from 0.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

Prince Mathew - PeerSpot reviewer
More customizable than IBM FileNet and useful for automation
One suggestion for IBM BPM is to provide better integration between their products, such as DataCap, which we use for scanning. Although the new CP4BA offers offline capabilities, not everyone is on CP4BA, so enhanced integration for those on older versions would be beneficial. Another major suggestion is to offer a migration path when a product reaches its end of life. For example, there was no migration path when we moved, so we had to redo everything we had developed over ten years completely.
Ateeq Rehman - PeerSpot reviewer
Customizable features empower seamless workflow automation
The system is fully customizable, very resilient, and fault-tolerant. We have first-line support from IBM, so there are no issues. We have integrations with different banks, ERP systems, and other human resource management systems by integrating through different systems. It provides many ways to integrate, and we are utilizing it effectively.
LY
Gives you the ability to design the screens outside the software and connect them as a component with the BPM engine
On the improvement part, I think the documentation for the tool, the official documentation, is not as strong as in other tools. You have lot of community. That is good. But sometimes you need - when you are working on a big client or a critical process - to be certain about certain things. So I think that the documentation for the tool, from the company, could be a little stronger. Also, the size of the team within Latin America. The size of the team that, in each country, knows about BPM - because of the size of Red Hat in comparison with the size of IBM or Oracle - is very little. You have maybe three or four people in the company, in Red Hat Mexico, that know about BPM; and in Peru, maybe one, who also needs to know about five other tools. You have help there, but sometimes you don't need that kind of help. You need to sit down with someone and take a good amount of time and discuss a process to solve a problem. It's a consequence of the size. IBM and Oracle are monsters. They have, say, 100 more employees than Red Hat. That is the problem. But on the other side, the price is good. You could pay four times less, five times less, in an average implementation with Red Hat than with IBM. So there is a trade-off.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"The most valuable features come in the bundle, the design process, creating services, creating BPDs, creating coaches, and UI/UX."
"The most valuable feature of IBM BPM is the low code design, and ease of maintenance. Additionally, the integration is good and easy to do."
"IBM BPM is stable."
"It excels at analytics. It provides visibility across all activities of a company's processes and performance."
"The designer feature, compared to other solutions is easy to use."
"This tool is very useful when it comes to enterprise-grade automation and governmental processes for the security aspects, performance, and reliability."
"IBM BPM's most valuable features are its speed in implementing and providing any changes."
"The tool streamlines operations, especially from an operational perspective, by facilitating decision-making and ensuring timely approvals. This helps prevent delays in the approval process, where business process management adds significant value for us."
"This product is tightly integrated with the RPA automation process."
"IBM Business Automation Workflow is useful for helping us design custom user interfaces and processes we require."
"The workflow of BAW's automation is handled inside of BPM, so we can see what state it is at and how things are processing through."
"IBM Business Automation Workflow provides a seamless streamlined collaboration within the organizations."
"IBM Business Automation Workflow is stable because the different infrastructure elements, such as the OS and middleware have been used for a long time."
"It performs the basic tasks that are required for the BBM solution as part of the overall integration with ECM or enterprise contact management."
"IBM provides long-term support and maintains a traditionally good customer-vendor relationship."
"The main factor that separates Red Hat software from Oracle, IBM, Pegasystems, is the ability that it gives you to design the screens outside the software and connect it as another component with the BPM engine."
 

Cons

"All our clients are changing to microservice and cloud service. However, BPM does not have a solution for microservice and cloud service."
"They don't have a mechanism to achieve processes, data sources, and data."
"It is a rather thick stack because you have to have WebSphere skills, IBM BPM skills, and an understanding of how the product runs on WebSphere. A lot of this will start to get a lot easier as they put it in containers, which will allow the platform to manage itself in some regards."
"We need process monitoring. It is somewhat complex to monitor all the processes which work."
"If the processing gets better, it would be more efficient."
"I'd like the tool to be more flexible."
"Initial setup is very complex. Too many steps need to be done at the database and server levels, and complex configurations. From what I see, a lot of these steps can be and should be automated."
"The cost of the solution has room for improvement."
"The monitoring features must be improved."
"IBM Business Automation Workflow could improve the integration."
"Sometimes, we feel like we are not getting the full features of the content management capabilities."
"Improvements could be made in debugging and troubleshooting."
"From what I understand, in the next release they're actually going to combine all of this together as one integrated solution... If we could have one unified way to build a solution, that would really help."
"The main improvement would be to make it easier to implement and deploy so that customers can kick it off and run quickly."
"The setup and installation process could be made easier."
"The main areas which need improvement are specifically around reporting and analytics."
"I think the documentation for the tool, the official documentation, is not as strong as in other tools. You have lot of community. That is good. But sometimes you need - when you are working on a big client or a critical process - to be certain about certain things. So I think that the documentation for the tool, from the company, could be a little stronger."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Licensing is managed by the client, but we know it is yearly. Camunda is relatively cheaper. There is not much difference in pricing of IBM and PEGA. For large licensing, there are discounts as well."
"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."
"​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."
"When considering the features of the solution the price is expensive compared to competitors."
"The pricing is quite high, I would rate it two out of five."
"The solution is highly-priced."
"I wish it was less expensive. I don't know why their pricing model is so high for a piece of software that could benefit so many. It just seems to me that they could have a lower cost, maybe with fewer features or whatever, but it should be possible to do a lower cost workflow software that uses the same interface and underlying engine but does not cost so much that you have to be a Fortune 50 company to buy it. It is annoying to me. There are a lot of solutions that IBM has that are really powerful but nobody can afford them. They know their business, but I still feel that there are a lot of customers who would benefit from this sort of thing. I don't know what this elitism is all about. I am sure they have people doing the money numbers, but it seems like you can make a lot more money by selling it to way more people for a little bit less."
"When you compare with Laserfiche and M-Files, IBM is expensive."
"While it can be quite costly, it offers significant benefits for users."
"It is on the expensive side, but it provides excellent supportability and an ecosystem that is proven to be a great fit for our organization."
"The product is expensive."
"Licensing varies by use-case."
"Our license is on a three-year term."
"There is still a relatively high total cost of ownership to actually implement, support, and stand up solutions."
"The solution has saved us time."
"Without any discount, you need tools that cost roughly between $80,000 to $100,000. That is less than with IBM. And on top of that you need the consulting. That will be another $200,000. So a quarter to a third of a million dollars is needed to use get started with BPM. So I usually recommend to my clients that they begin with a little project, with the community version. That way they don't spend $200,000 or $300,000, they spend $150,000 and zero on software."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
35%
Computer Software Company
9%
Government
6%
Insurance Company
6%
No data available
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
No data available
 

Questions from the Community

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 inter...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM BPM?
Once it is installed, maintaining it is not a big issue.
What do you like most about IBM Business Automation Workflow?
It performs the basic tasks that are required for the BBM solution as part of the overall integration with ECM or ent...
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Business Automation Workflow?
The price of IBM Business Automation Workflow is on the higher side compared to the features it offers.
What needs improvement with IBM Business Automation Workflow?
Code management lacks merging capabilities. If parallel development requires merging, improvements in this area would...
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Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
Business Automation Workflow
Polymita Business Suite
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

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
Key Bank, Barclays, Control€xpert, MIR Insurance Brokers, Conqord Oil
Bayer, Grupo Televisa, RCBC, Peavey
Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda, Automation Anywhere, Apache and others in Business Process Management (BPM). Updated: June 2025.
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