IBM Business Automation Workflow vs. Pega Platform

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
IBM Business Automation Workflow
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
IBM Business Automation Workflow is a solution that helps users automate digital workflows to increase productivity, efficiency and insights — on premises or on cloud.N/A
Pega Platform
Score 5.9 out of 10
N/A
Pega Platform is a combined business process management and robotic process automation (RPA) platform with advanced workforce analytics from Pegasystems.
$35
per month per user* (or $0.45 per case**)
Pricing
IBM Business Automation WorkflowPega Platform
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
Low-code Factory Edition
$35
per month per user* (or $0.45 per case**)
Standard Edition
$90
per month per user* (or $0.80 per case**)
Enterprise Edition
Custom Quote
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
IBM Business Automation WorkflowPega Platform
Free Trial
YesYes
Free/Freemium Version
NoNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
NoNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details*500 named user minimum. Additional users available in blocks of 100. Billed annually. Based on a 3-year term. **350,000 cases / year minimum. Additional cases available in blocks of 150,000.
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
IBM Business Automation WorkflowPega Platform
Considered Both Products
IBM Business Automation Workflow
Chose IBM Business Automation Workflow
IBM BPM makes development easier, which is faster when compared to the others. IBM's customer support is good. Easy for the user to learn while providing powerful integration. More secure when compared to others. It provides the reusability of components. Monitoring and report …
Pega Platform
Chose Pega Platform
We did evaluate multiple products offerings with Pega Platform capabilities and observed that Pega PRPC rules engine and case management capabilities are better over so many BPM Tools. We also conducted a detailed study with developers to identify the best products out of Suite …
Chose Pega Platform
Pega is far more customization and cohesive in its overall design.
Chose Pega Platform

There are lots of BPM products in market like IBM BPM, Lombardi, Appian case 360 but PEGA stands out in terms of multiple capabilities:

  • Support for multiple protocol
  • Federated case management
Chose Pega Platform
IBM BPM was purely Java based and was not equipped enough to provide the custom user interface that was required for the project. Pega UI capabilities were stronger and easy to configure in much less time.
Chose Pega Platform
Oracle suite has more capabilities and for a complex implementation it is the best solution. But for simple applications Pega 7 is much easier to use and would deliver same results with minimum effort and investment.
Chose Pega Platform
PEGA ease of development as compared to IBM BPM ODM is a major plus.... Its UI is also definitely better than BOSCH. However, it fails to integrate complex service logic as easily as IBM BPM ODM. Also, BOSCH, in my opinion, has a more error free and robust environment to offer.
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
IBM Business Automation WorkflowPega Platform
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
20% above category average
Pega Platform
8.7
62 Ratings
7% above category average
Dashboards10.04 Ratings9.061 Ratings
Standard reports10.04 Ratings8.661 Ratings
Custom reports10.04 Ratings8.660 Ratings
Process Engine
Comparison of Process Engine features of Product A and Product B
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
17% above category average
Pega Platform
8.7
64 Ratings
3% above category average
Process designer10.04 Ratings9.463 Ratings
Process simulation10.03 Ratings9.655 Ratings
Business rules engine10.04 Ratings9.663 Ratings
SOA support10.04 Ratings7.049 Ratings
Process player10.03 Ratings9.447 Ratings
Support for modeling languages10.04 Ratings5.46 Ratings
Form builder10.04 Ratings9.658 Ratings
Model execution10.04 Ratings9.854 Ratings
Collaboration
Comparison of Collaboration features of Product A and Product B
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
3 Ratings
20% above category average
Pega Platform
8.0
49 Ratings
2% below category average
Social collaboration tools10.03 Ratings8.049 Ratings
Content Management Capabilties
Comparison of Content Management Capabilties features of Product A and Product B
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
21% above category average
Pega Platform
4.4
9 Ratings
60% below category average
Content management10.04 Ratings4.49 Ratings
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IBM Business Automation WorkflowPega Platform
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Score 9.7 out of 10
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Score 9.7 out of 10
Medium-sized Companies
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Score 9.7 out of 10
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Score 9.7 out of 10
Enterprises
IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation
IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation
Score 9.1 out of 10
IBM Cloud Pak for Business Automation
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Score 9.1 out of 10
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User Ratings
IBM Business Automation WorkflowPega Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
10.0
(8 ratings)
4.4
(72 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
8.0
(4 ratings)
10.0
(7 ratings)
Usability
8.0
(2 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Support Rating
8.0
(2 ratings)
10.0
(7 ratings)
In-Person Training
9.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Online Training
-
(0 ratings)
8.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
9.0
(1 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
Product Scalability
10.0
(1 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
User Testimonials
IBM Business Automation WorkflowPega Platform
Likelihood to Recommend
IBM
Have your process first on paper Its important to first document the process before venturing into BPMS. It will save a lot of pain and heartaches. A BPM tool is no magic bullet, it merely automates your process. Its upto you to put visibility and tracking on top of it. Provide monitoring so that you get a chance to improve your process continously. BPM is not an application If you are trying to build an application with BPM, chances are that your are alraedy failing. BPM must be a strategic initiative for an organization. Yes, you build Dashboards, Reports and other software in BPMS, however you do it at a process level not at an application level. http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2011/05/bpm-initiative.html Know the difference between process data and business data http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2011/05/lombardi-best-practices.html http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2012/02/bpm-system-architecture.html
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Pegasystems
Pega Platform has introduced the low code feature, using app studio seasonal and professional developer can develop application easily and quickly. The initial application can be build by Business analyst and product owner who has less knowledge of Pega Platform, further application can be enhanced/extended by professional developer. We can develop end to end application and promote to higher environment. Easily we can perform parallel development using branch.
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Pros
IBM
  • System does a great job normalizing business process and automating order processing tasks. Before TeamWorks, the process was much more manual and more expensive staff ($65k to $70K) were required to manage the process. Since implementing TeamWorks, we need much lower-skilled workers to manage order processing.
  • System ensures that we have consistent data across all systems.
  • Rules engine is really the “company playbook” – it is the heart and soul of how the company works. It handles thousands of orders per day
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Pegasystems
  • Quick development time. Much of the Pega "rules" are easy to configure and implement.
  • Visually friendly and modern. Much of the UI/UX elements in the system are continuously supported and updated, giving a nice feel to the apps.
  • Many of the configurations and rules Pega gives to the developers can also be delegated to business users. The organization and structure of the client's business can easily be adapted in the Pega platform.
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Cons
IBM
  • The system gets crashed when many instances go into the queue stage. The system even crashes and sometimes restarts automatically when the load on the server increases. We had to develop a separate software for this and maintain the same.
  • We cannot manipulate the data during run time. It is difficult to develop user-interfaces with complex functionality.
  • In order to consume external services that follow HTTP protocol, we need to use IDE for that, and consuming services from IDE takes a lot of time to give a response.
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Pegasystems
  • Need more learning materials. For Beginners who have previous programming experience with another language takes more time to learn.
  • If the developer is met with an issue in pega platform , they have to rely on Pega supporting team to fix it.
  • Customization is available but is not encouraged. Pega does not support faults that occur in customized solutions.
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Likelihood to Renew
IBM
This particular decision will be made by other people. Overall IBM BPM is the best BPM engine that I have worked with. It is implemented at our company and IT and business are already somewhat familiar with it. Therefore if asked I will recommend renewal as long as the price is reasonable.
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Pegasystems
Pegasystems has continued to demonstrate a strong partnership with our organization and investment in their product that aligns with our overall vision and need. Pegasystems has engaged us at every level, with the assistance of minor defects to the overall roadmap planning and alignment of our goals
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Usability
IBM
• The system is easy enough to use but, by definition, is a complex tool. However, they have done a good job generally balancing tool complexity / capability with usability. When comparing to MS Biz Talk, for example, Biz Talk has less functionality but is actually harder to use.
• Software is very flexible. For somebody with the right technical background, it’s quite easy to write some Java code to overcome any hurdles or make the product do what is needed
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Pegasystems
Pega Platform is enhancing its product and launching new features day by day which help to achieve customers needs. If I talk about the earlier version of Pega Platform (i.e. pega v5 and 6.3) there were many numbers of limitations in Pega Platform and if we need to do some customization then needed to write custom java and jave scripts to achieve the functionally. Now I can say Pega Platform is running with market trends and demand. Pega Platform is giving all the options which support the current technologies like decisioning capabilities, real time processing, mashup, process fabrics etc..
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Support Rating
IBM
Issues can be raised through tickets and it works based on the priority of the issue. The Support Team response is also good and the solution is provided in a short span of time. In a case where the issue is serious, they try to find out the root cause and provide an alternative for it.
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Pegasystems
It’s very slow sometimes, but that may be our servers. Also the Knowledge Library needs some work - again, not sure if it’s our setup or what- but I’m unable to search the body of an article for content, so I have to be very intentional with tagging, but it’s not ideal.
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In-Person Training
IBM
• Attended on premise sysadmin training for 4 days, 8 hours per day. Although further follow-up training was available, I never felt the need to go back. Training was very hands-on with real modeling (rather than just following a manual). Very effective.
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Pegasystems
No answers on this topic
Online Training
IBM
No answers on this topic
Pegasystems
The online training is an excellent one, but still it is missing hands on development.
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Implementation Rating
IBM
• Very satisfied – not too difficult at all.
• We had a consultant available as part of our contract, but we didn’t really need to use (except for some advice on ActiveDirectory and single sign-on)
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Pegasystems
Implementation is totally depend up on the requirement
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Alternatives Considered
IBM
Pega Pega is a comprehensive suite which offers a unique theme of BPM development in the market. A no-coding approach based on rules with inheritance makes Pega a very powerful product. However Pega, falls short on integration centric capabilities and very rigid to customize. On the other hand IBM comes with array of products which suits needs of varying degree. Advanced integration is solved by BPEL Process Server which has support for state based patterns and mediation. Dynamic rules and event management can be solved with WODM, Cloud to on-premise connectivity with Cast Iron, Enterprise gateway and security usecases with DataPower, Social BPM with IBM BPM , WODM, mobify with Worklight. Pega has a little bit of eveything here and there. It solves the dynamic rule management, brings out the flavor of Social BPM and mobility with Antenna ( I guess) and predictive analytics as well in one single suite. There are certain usecases which needs to have a little bit of everything, however this little bits and pieces of functionality when its blows, Pega would have problems to scale. With IBM its a bit nightmare to maintain a variety of technologies, however you can wish to go for one without the other and go for something only when you truly need it. Pega vs IBM Its difficult to pick a winner. In nutshell when you want a full scale BPM with rich integration capabilities go for IBM BPM. On the other hand if you hava mature integration capability already, Pega can yield quick results for you as well. Pega's strength is its methodology. IBM BPM's strength is integration. Actually you can't go wrong with both in terms of implementation. My strong recommendation is to invest time to process analysis and pick a good vendor to support consulting and implementation.
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Pegasystems
We did evaluate multiple products offerings with Pega Platform capabilities and observed that Pega PRPC rules engine and case management capabilities are better over so many BPM Tools. We also conducted a detailed study with developers to identify the best products out of Suite of BPM products. It's observed that Rules engines integration is very streamlined with forms in Pega whereas other tools multiple have powerful data model capabilities but lacks the ease of creating business rules.
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Scalability
IBM
It scales from small team interactions to business processes serving thousands of employees, as well as straight-through-processing needs that go well beyond. Of course, scale is always in the eye of the beholder, but IBM BPM does a good job of giving you all of the hooks, APIs, and data that you need to take on whatever scaling approaches you need to meet the load
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Pegasystems
No answers on this topic
Return on Investment
IBM
  • It has added value to the upper management to give visibility into what is happening at any time in the enterprise.
  • Boosted employee morale because it gives them all the information to work the case/task in a single location.
  • Identifies bottlenecks and improves the turnover.
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Pegasystems
  • For one of the applications we worked on, we were able to reduce the processing time on a case from 2 days to 20 minutes by utilizing Pega
  • We were able to resolve the issue of the routing of cases to users based on a specific algorithm by use of Pega
  • Pega case management feature was extensively used in one of the application to establish a parent-child relationship which was very helpful for all the business users
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ScreenShots