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IBM BPM vs vCenter Orchestrator comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

Review summaries and opinions

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

Categories and Ranking

IBM BPM
Ranking in Process Automation
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (7th), Application Infrastructure (6th)
vCenter Orchestrator
Ranking in Process Automation
7th
Average Rating
8.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
50
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of June 2025, in the Process Automation category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 6.6%, down from 10.6% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of vCenter Orchestrator is 0.2%, down from 0.4% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Process Automation
 

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.
Gerhard Gmelch - PeerSpot reviewer
Enhance automation efficiency with cost-effective graphical workflow design
I use vCenter Orchestrator for automation purposes, specifically to run automation workbooks The most valuable features are the graphical UI for designing the workflows and the interfaces that come out of the box. Additionally, it is included in the VMware Vitalization Stack, which means there…

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The integration and design are valuable features."
"IBM BPM is stable."
"I rate the technical support a ten out of ten...The product's installation was easy."
"It continues to keep up with the changing needs of the business. That is the strong value proposition of BPM. It's not a one-time automation."
"The system integration layer is valuable because this enables an organization to create a single point where all the key organizational master data is held in different IT applications across different functions, that can be accessed and updated."
"We made the transformation to agile. Altogether with BPM, it is the total package."
"The solution is more customizable than IBM FileNet."
"The solution is stable."
"The most crucial feature of vCenter is its scalability. We can use it to expand our network, so we don't have to report our client devices. The network configuration features are also helpful because we can migrate entire networks."
"The most valuable feature of the solution is availability."
"The backup and recovery times are very quick."
"In regards to the workflows, the fact that we can actually have a full dashboard library of all the existing workflows on this is great. We can see all the workflows and what all the actions do and can work with scripts."
"The solution is pretty stable and reliable."
"The hardware abstraction layer, being able to make the VMs portable when moving to a different platform or over a WAN."
"The stability of the product is very good."
"vCenter Orchestrator is very reliable and stable."
 

Cons

"One area for improvement is the scripting languages used within the solution. They could integrate other languages such as GoMango or Python than JavaScript."
"It needs more customization. We like to customize the screens to show more things related to our company."
"It might not be suitable for entry level clients because it comes with a huge number of modules for processing that at times might not be necessary for upcoming clients."
"We still have a couple of issues that we are working on right now with stability. Mostly on the configuration side of the tool, and it has been about a month that we have been working to stabilize the platform.​"
"It can definitely be improved in terms of performance and stability."
"IBM BPM is stable, but sometimes there are issues with the server."
"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."
"The stability varies because it involves a lot of other components like databases, so sometimes if something goes wrong there, it can't recover from the fatal errors."
"The interface could be improved to bring greater user-friendliness and ease of use."
"I would like to see a greater ability to do mobile administration."
"The solution has a limited count of parallel executions, which can be a bottleneck for larger environments."
"I would like to see more automation added in the future."
"There are no good manuals or guidelines on integrations. Hence, you need to be asking someone."
"The product’s cost needs improvement."
"When the SSO certificate needs to be renewed, the upgrading and testing are quite complicated."
"I liked the previous client better than the current web client of vCenter Orchestrator, though my colleagues like the client now. The technical support for vCenter Orchestrator needs improvement."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"​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."
"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."
"I give the pricing an eight out of ten."
"The solution is highly-priced."
"Starting out with Express can also help reduce the cost for adopting the product."
"The price of the solution is fair for an enterprise solution that has both cloud and on-premise deployments and when comparing to competitors. Recently IBM has introduced Cloud Pak which allows for more flexible licensing options for automation and other features."
"The solution is expensive since it is an enterprise application."
"IBM BPM is expensive, so most large companies opt for IBM based on their licensing options."
"vCenter Orchestrator is a very expensive solution."
"Our licensing is on a yearly basis. We pay for the license and then we pay the support every year."
"My company needs to make yearly payments towards the licensing costs attached to the product."
"The solution is a bit expensive."
"vCenter Orchestrator is an expensive solution."
"The concept of hyper-convergence is smart. I don't know if it can be applied with less cost to be more affordable for small or medium-sized companies. The cost is a very important factor for it. We are currently depending on SAN storage. However, the hyper-converged solutions are depending on the storage within the hosts, such as vSAN in the VMware. It is a smart solution."
"The product is expensive."
"We renew the solution's license every one or two years."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
12%
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?
Once it is installed, maintaining it is not a big issue.
What do you like most about vCenter Orchestrator?
The stability of the product is very good.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for vCenter Orchestrator?
We're running a low-profile budget. This is not our main focus on investment technology, so we're trying to reduce costs due to the change from perpetual to subscription licenses.
What needs improvement with vCenter Orchestrator?
After the change from perpetual licensing to subscriptions, the cost model changed. We are considering alternatives since we lost the perpetual aspect, and support is changing.
 

Also Known As

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

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
Beiersdorf Shared Services
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. vCenter Orchestrator and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
859,129 professionals have used our research since 2012.