IBM BPM vs ServiceNow Orchestration comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

IBM BPM
Ranking in Process Automation
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Number of Reviews
106
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (5th), Application Infrastructure (9th)
ServiceNow Orchestration
Ranking in Process Automation
11th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
14
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2024, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 11.6%, up from 10.4% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of ServiceNow Orchestration is 6.8%, up from 4.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation
Unique Categories:
Business Process Management (BPM)
8.8%
Application Infrastructure
3.9%
No other categories found
 

Featured Reviews

BA
Apr 19, 2023
A reasonably priced tool that is helpful for the automation of business processes
Our customers have experienced a lot of benefits. So now, they have automation in place to implement internally or externally in their environment. This has enhanced the customer experience and made it good. The product has many BPM tools, which help eliminate bits of work. Also, information is now available and accessible according to their security or role in their businesses. They can now increase their process in the Middle East. They also do manual work using the tool. The tool also helps them ensure that they are able to follow policy compliance. In short, the tool helps in a digital transformation, and so IBM BPM increases the efficiency of our clients. All of the aforementioned reasons increase the revenue of our clients and our company.
SS
Oct 6, 2022
Enables an organization to bring all its functions together, saving time and resources
The use case depends on the needs of our customers. We deploy it for business and IT workflows as well as for within IT workflows. Use cases also include auto-ticketing and auto-resolution. We have a premium partnership with ServiceNow and I'm a business manager in IT services.  The automation…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Responsive Portal + Process Federation Server. This set of solutions offers a unified worklist to our customers."
"It helps maintain, and in many instances, lower costs, as well as to maintain those costs, keeping them stable."
"Provides the power to understand and automate processes."
"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."
"We use it for automating certain processes which previously took a lot of time for agents to set up different products for customers. They would have to enter a lot of different systems. This has now mostly been automated."
"IBM BPM's best features include document sharing, management document creation, widget and barcode creation, and integration."
"IBM BPM's most valuable features are its speed in implementing and providing any changes."
"Stability-wise, I rate the solution a ten out of ten."
"The interface of the solution is very user friendly and it is easily accessible via a simple URL. This makes it easier to complete the UI based tasks but using other features require expertise in languages like Java. But along with that, there are limitation in terms of network connectivity testing and administrator faces regular challenges in conducting connectivity tests due to these limitations."
"Orchestration is commonly utilized by major corporations. The process of linking methods in ServiceNow, known as the RTS chain to parent methods, is executed seamlessly and efficiently. It's quite impressive and significant in its impact."
"The data visualization is good."
"This is a user-friendly solution where scripts can be made with ease. There are also many integration options, including Microsoft products, which gives the product a competitive edge."
"It's scalable."
"The iTerm suite is also crucial for visibility and optimization."
"It's probably the best product out there."
"The product has a flexible interface for development."
 

Cons

"Except for the Lucene the index - we had a couple of issues in the Process Portal where the Lucene index went out of sync, and we had to work at least 15 - 20 hours to have it back in sync with the database."
"Our developers are complaining that it's too complex to maintain."
"User Interface components could be further refined to enhance and extend customizations dictated by end clients."
"The tool's workflow function is very strong."
"Some of the features are not enough for my business. We need to build custom user management for the many end users affected by BPM."
"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."
"IBM BPM can improve the dashboards and reports. It only has two dashboards, and reporting is very difficult to build."
"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."
"The automatic remediation needs enhancement, particularly integrating ServiceNow with tools like SolarWinds and Logic Monitor. It is functional, but it needs improvement."
"ServiceNow Orchestration needs to improve multiple aspects in which their event monitoring system is one. The solution lacks event monitoring systems which makes them non-competitive. They need to include improvements in a similar manner that they did in Sweden."
"It is a highly complex platform to work on."
"I would like a user experience module to be added."
"There should be connectors to cover at least the top industry applications, and they should be easier to configure in a plug-and-play fashion."
"There can be gaps in integration."
"The flow rate for releases and updates is very, very slow and does not meet customers' objectives for scalability."
"There is still room for more integrations. Or, it would be nice to bundle multiple products together rather than selling everything as a model as that turns out to be a bit costly."
 

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."
"It should provide more flexibility to connect with external systems, and there should be in-built services that can be used to integrate with other systems quickly."
"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."
"It gives us a good return on investment."
"When considering the features of the solution the price is expensive compared to competitors."
"We have a yearly licensing model. It is not expensive. There are no addition costs to the standard license."
"The product is expensive considering the hardware and software costs."
"Starting out with Express can also help reduce the cost for adopting the product."
"It is not very expensive."
"In terms of price, this solution is at the higher end of what you'll find."
"ServiceNow doesn't give a clear cost indication. They have different contracts with different organizations and it's all about negotiation, so you don't know how they are doing at the cost level."
"Pricing is custom to every customer."
"This is an expensive product, but it is the best in the market considering the features and lack of competitors."
"The cost of the solution is based on the number of plugins, conductors and integrations used and is charged annually. The licensing cause has been increasing gradually which makes it difficult to access. Initially offer free features but over the time the charges rise which make it an expensive solution with limited features. Along with that, the integration issues persist and require additional middle where and internet connectivity for effective usage."
"It is quite expensive because we've had some customers come back and say it's quite pricey because in order for them to go ahead with Orchestration, they must have already been paying for Discovery, service mapping, and a few other things."
"The solution is costly and orchestrations are very expensive."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
13%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Retailer
6%
Financial Services Firm
17%
Computer Software Company
15%
Government
8%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

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 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...
What do you like most about ServiceNow Orchestration?
The interface of the solution is very user friendly and it is easily accessible via a simple URL. This makes it easier to complete the UI based tasks but using other features require expertise in l...
What needs improvement with ServiceNow Orchestration?
There is room for improvement in pricing. The initial setup is a bit challenging, only due to getting incorrect information from the client team. That’s the only issue, possibly. You have to read t...
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
No data available
 

Learn More

 

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
experian, BEACHBODY, HealthPartners, Banosoft
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. ServiceNow Orchestration and other solutions. Updated: July 2024.
793,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.