This latest Forrester report evaluates 15 SOA and BPM technology vendors in the Comprehensive Integration Solutions (CIS) category. Vendors in their CIS category are thought to have a good overall combination of architecture, integration server, application development, business process management (BPM), and business-to-business (B2B) support features.
Over the past four years, TIBCO Software, Oracle, IBM and Software AG, have topped Forrester’s leaders quadrant. This group of four business integration solution giants have sustained their superiority as far back as 2005 (Forrester did not issue a white paper on comprehensive integration solutions in 2009).
It is helpful to take a look at how Forrester formulates its findings, since their approach helps to better define what businesses should be looking for in a comprehensive business integration package.
Forrester’s analysis takes into account a wide-ranging, 137-point criterion that looks into every key aspect of the industry’s leading comprehensive business integration solutions. The three overarching categories that these points fall into: Current Offering, Strategy, and Market Presence.
The “Current Offering” category dominates Forrester’s analysis, accounting for 110 criteria, which includes architecture, integration server, application development framework, business process management, and B2B support. As a result, the leaders in this category are all represented in the top 4 performers.
The “Strategy” category includes 12 key criteria that bring into focus companies’ planning and partnering with other key players in the marketplace. These criteria include factors such as product strategy, solution cost, strategic alliances, and customer reference checks.
The “Market Presence” category contains the fewest criteria – only 12 of the 137 points. As indicated by the chart below, both TIBCO and Oracle scored strongly against major players in the IT industry, such as SAP, Microsoft, SEEBURGER, Sterling Commerce, and others either in the “Current Offering” and/or “Strategy” categories, in light of the fact that TIBCO enjoys an equal or lesser market presence than these other competitors. Though it is also important remember that some vendors have gained market presence through acquisition and thus have less cohesive product footprint.
Summarizing TIBCO’s performance in the analysis, Forrester commented that:
“TIBCO Software’s CIS provides strong SOA, BPM, and application development features.
TIBCO Software’s ActiveMatrix Platform combines the features of TIBCO ActiveMatrix
BusinessWorks with TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM (a near-total rewrite of its BPM solution
obtained via the acquisition of Staffware in 2004). TIBCO Software also recently acquired the
Proginet MFT solutions, which it will be incorporating into the BusinessWorks solution set.”
To be sure, other business integration technologies exist on the market that have performed well in specific industries, and may in fact offer more niche-based functionality and performance. But for the purposes of evaluating comprehensive business integration solutions both TIBCO and Oracle performed very highly in this category.
To read Forrester’s complete white paper, click here.
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