EXECUTIVE OVER VIEW

A NEW COMPETITIVE
ADVANTAGE
The Convergence of Processes, Integration, Analytics and Architecture
Business process management, enterprise integration and business analytics have been traveling
along convergent paths. Meanwhile, enterprise architecture management is emerging to address
complexity. But how are these technologies and markets changing to enable competitive
advantage, and what impact will this have on IT procurement and IT vendor strategy?

KEY FINDINGS
The IT architecture of organizations and vendors will migrate away from application- and transactionoriented designs that automate repetitive tasks, using fixed logic, running on dedicated on-premises
infrastructure, and will move toward process-centric systems that share strategic information and
dynamically assemble unique services to execute any logical series of tasks across disparate, distributed
systems internally, and externally with trading partners. This will cause investment priorities to shift.
Pure-play ERP and business application suites will yield to process-centric systems designed to create
competitive advantage by executing, integrating and analyzing in real time the end-to-end processes
that span the business functions of an organization, deployed both on-premises and in various clouds.
In terms of development priorities for BPM vendors, business analytics, enterprise integration (e.g.,
application-to-application, business-to-business, hybrid clouds) and content management capabilities
will be enhanced (or added, if absent) to strengthen each BPM vendors value proposition and comply
with evolving end-user buying criteria. Mobility and social process management will become next
generation differentiators.
Persistent data stored in enhanced data management and BPM cloud services will become a core
enabler upon which enterprise integration vendors will also develop big data management offerings.
As this occurs, they will invest further in business analytics technologies to extract insight from big data,
enabling enterprise integration vendors to become big data management and analysis-as-a-service
vendors.
Enterprise architecture management technologies will be commonly used in large enterprises to
organize and control business and IT strategy, complexity and business transformation (change)
management. EAM tools will be expanded and simplified to more easily capture business and
operational planning from across an enterprise. EAM modeling approaches implemented in a strategic
planning group, in finance, or in an IT organization will be deemed impractical in the long run. EAM
capabilities will be distributed to business functions and lines of business where changes can be
captured and rolled up to form a holistic enterprise view.

NOVEMBER 2012
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REPORT SNAPSHOT
TITLE

A New Competitive Advantage

ANALYST

Carl Lehmann, Research Manager,

Enterprise Architecture, Integration
& Business Process Management
November 2012
58 pages

RELEASE DATE
LENGTH

ABOUT THIS REPORT

Business process management (BPM) is maturing as a managerial and IT discipline that
treats processes as strategic assets. Savvy market leaders continuously reevaluate how
they do things and adapt their processes to create competitive advantage. This has sparked
the emergence and growth of many new BPM technologies and vendors. However, BPM
is rarely a plug-and-play initiative using one technology. It often requires many types of
traditional technologies, including data management and integration middleware, business rules management, and analytics. Nimble vendors from several IT sectors have built
out their respective product strategies to capture market share. Technology convergence
now blurs the lines between what were once distinct IT markets and is forcing users to
reconsider what tools they use for what purpose. This report examines the events, trends
and convergence of several technologies including BPM, enterprise integration (EI) and
business analytics (BA) that are changing the way management teams plan for and run
their businesses; how enterprise architecture (EA) is emerging to manage complexity; and
how IT vendors continue to adapt their offerings in response.

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EXECUTIVE OVER VIEW

TABLE OF CONTENTS
SECTION 1: EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

1.1 INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
1.2 APPROACH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.3 METHODOLOGY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.4 KEY FINDINGS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

1.4.1 Business Process Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3

1.4.2 Enterprise Integration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.4.3 Business Analytics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
1.4.4 Enterprise Architecture Management . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5

SECTION 2: THE JOURNEY TO CONVERGENCE

2.1 REPORT ORGANIZATION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7

SECTION 3: TRENDS AFFECTING BUSINESS

PROCESS MANAGEMENT

3.1 BPM DEFINED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8

3.2 THE BPM MARKET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.1 Situation Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
3.2.2 Whats Driving Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
3.2.3 Vendor Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10
Figure 1: BPM Vendor Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10

SECTION 4: TRENDS AFFECTING ENTERPRISE INTEGRATION

11

4.1 EI DEFINED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.2 THE EI MARKET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.2.1 Situation Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11
4.2.2 Whats Driving Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

12

4.2.3 Vendor Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13

Figure 2: Enterprise Integration Vendor Landscape . . . . . . . . . . 13

A NEW COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

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SECTION 5: TRENDS AFFECTING BUSINESS ANALYTICS

14

5.1 BA DEFINED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.2 THE BA MARKET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.2.1 Situation Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
5.2.2 Whats Driving Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

15

Figure 3: A KPI Set to Measure Process Performance and Outcomes . . . .

16

5.2.3 Vendor Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17

Figure 4: Business Analytics Vendor Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . 17

SECTION 6: TRENDS AFFECTING ENTERPRISE

ARCHITECTURE MANAGEMENT

18

6.1 EAM DEFINED . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18

6.2 THE EAM MARKET . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6.2.1 Situation Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
6.2.2 Whats Driving Change . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

18

Figure 5: A Layered Perspective of Enterprise Architecture . . . . . . .

19

6.2.3 Vendor Landscape . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20

Figure 6: Enterprise Architecture Management Vendor Landscape . . . . . 20

SECTION 7: END-USER PERSPECTIVES AND PRIORITIES

22

7.1 OVERVIEW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22
Figure 7: End-User Investment Perspectives . . . . . . . . . . . .

22

7.2 LOOKING THROUGH THE C-LEVEL LENS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 23

7.3 LOOKING THROUGH THE IT ORGANIZATION LENS . . . . . . . . . .

24

7.4 LOOKING THROUGH THE LINE-OF-BUSINESS LENS . . . . . . . . . . 25

SECTION 8: ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS

27

8.1 BUILDING ON PRIOR RESEARCH . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27

8.2 ANALYSIS TECHNIQUE . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Figure 8: Overall Vendor Capability Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . 29
8.3 BPM MARKET ANALYSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32
Figure 9: BPM Vendor Capabilities Assessment . . . . . . . . . . .

32

8.3.1 BPMS Created through Convergence . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34

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EXECUTIVE OVER VIEW

8.3.2 BA is a Priority . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 34
8.3.3 EI and CM are Next and of Equal Value . . . . . . . . . . . . 35
8.3.4 BRMS, DM and EAM are Unique Disciplines . . . . . . . . . . 37
8.3.5 BPM as an Application Platform . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 37
8.3.6 BPM Market Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
8.4 EI MARKET ANALYSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 38
Figure 10: EI Vendor Capabilities Assessment . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
8.4.1 Latency and Time to Value Matter . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
8.4.2 DM Adds Value to EI . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 40
8.4.3 BPM Allies with EI Leaders and a Few Innovators . . . . . . . . 41
8.4.4 BA follows BPM Lead among EI Vendors . . . . . . . . . . .

41

8.4.5 Not Likely to Pursue BRMS, CM and EAM . . . . . . . . . . . 42

8.4.6 EI Market Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .42
8.5 BA MARKET ANALYSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

42

Figure 11: BA Vendor Capabilities Assessment . . . . . . . . . . .

43

8.5.1 Consolidation Breeds Opportunity for New Entrants . . . . . . . . 43

8.5.2 Process Discovery and Analysis Emerges . . . . . . . . . . .

44

8.5.3 BA Market Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44

8.6 EAM MARKET ANALYSIS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Figure 12: EAM Vendor Capabilities Assessment . . . . . . . . . . .46
8.6.1 BA and BPM Align Closely with EAM . . . . . . . . . . . .

46

8.6.2 EI Will Be Pursued to Simplify EAM . . . . . . . . . . . . .47

8.6.3 EAM Market Direction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 47

SECTION 9: IMPLICATIONS

49

9.1 IMPLICATIONS FOR END USERS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49

9.2 IMPLICATIONS FOR VENDORS AND SERVICE PROVIDERS . . . . . . . . 50
9.3 IMPLICATIONS FOR INVESTORS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 51

SECTION 10: RELATED RESEARCH

53

INDEX OF COMPANIES

59

A NEW COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE

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