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IBM BPM vs IBM Case Foundation comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 18, 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 Business Process Management (BPM)
6th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (6th), Process Automation (5th)
IBM Case Foundation
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
32nd
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
13
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of July 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 6.9%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Case Foundation is 0.4%, up from 0.3% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

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.
Nouman Nawaz - PeerSpot reviewer
Mature product in terms of security and stable product
The architecture is a bit difficult, but in BAW, they introduced the Business Automation Workflow. It's a bit easier compared to Case Manager. Currently, we use Case Manager, so it's a bit difficult to upgrade and handle, but BAW is comparatively much better and easier to handle. The limitation is only for customization because IBM doesn't support it. In some scenarios, if you want some business processes to be customized, we have already spoken two or three times with IBM representatives that we have to customize some of the features in this business process. They would say that if you want to do this automation at your own end, then okay, fine, go ahead, but we are not supporting all this customization. The only thing is the customization because it's a complete standard application.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"Our customers use the solution as a workflow platform to manage their processes."
"Its most valuable features are usability and integration with other IBM products."
"The possibility to add Java code as embedded .jar, that increases the flexibility of the solution."
"It's a solid product. It covers most of the pain points for clients."
"It has improved my organization quite a bit. It brought awareness to what the business processes are, even to the business side, who did not necessarily know what they are."
"We can scale by increasing the infrastructure which is currently running."
"It is a stale solution."
"The installation was straightforward."
"The client and the IBM content navigation are the solution's most valuable features."
"It's very easy."
"The solution is scalable."
"Case Foundation provides a strong security boost."
"It is easy to set up workflows that notify the user depending on certain events."
"The only thing is that we can easily track where the application is in the process, from manual to automation."
"The most valuable features are those involving decision making, analysis, and anything related to event documents because those processes are related to content as well."
"The most valuable feature is its stability, which is why we are using it."
 

Cons

"We have been experiencing bad performance and instability."
"I'm hearing things might be improving, to really deliver on BPM as opposed to simply workflow. That really should be emphasized a lot more than it has been, because a lot of customers will simply implement the process and leave it there, because the product maybe doesn't emphasize BPM as much as it should, as much as maybe they talk about it in the sales process. The whole idea of BPM, is to iteratively improve the process, and in order to do that you have to have the analytics tool with it. A lot of times that doesn't go as far as it should simply because there's a lot more work to be done for that to happen, and just some sort of technical limitations that don't make that as easy as it should be."
"It needs more customization. We like to customize the screens to show more things related to our company."
"Importing and exporting between multiple environments is more difficult with other tools."
"Performance in the development environment space. I know that they have been taking it off the desktop version and putting on the web, and it is not 100% yet."
"There is room for improvement in the stability."
"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 configuration is not that easy, and the initial deployment took three months."
"The interface needs to be more user-friendly."
"The cloud version could use more stability."
"The solution can be quite expensive."
"Once a workflow is launched then it stays static forever, which is a problem because if there is a change in the business then you cannot change the workflow."
"Comparing the solution with other interfaces, IBM BPM is much better than Case Foundation. They need to make this solution's interface more user-friendly."
"90% of the feedback we receive states that the UI is not very user-friendly."
"There is a need for more open and flexible integration capabilities, allowing seamless collaboration with a broader spectrum of business process management solutions, beyond the confines of IBM's document management offerings."
"The limitation is only for customization because IBM doesn't support it."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"I think it's a reasonably priced tool, but it's important to consider which customers should buy this solution. It's designed for enterprise customers, not small ones."
"The pricing is very high."
"IBM BPM is expensive, so most large companies opt for IBM based on their licensing options."
"The solution is highly-priced."
"It may be cheaper for organizations to pay for the Viewer licenses that are immediately up and running in the cloud, rather than paying for someone to administer publishing to an intranet."
"The cloud and license of the subscription model for IBM BPM can be complex. There are a lot of alternatives to choose from."
"IBM BPM cannot be considered a cheaply priced product. IBM BPM is a really expensive product compared to other companies. One needs to opt for the perpetual licensing model offered by IBM."
"Price wise, IBM BPM is cheaper than other similar solutions and has excellent pricing."
"IBM Case Foundation is a little expensive."
"Pricing is in the mid-range, it is not cheap, but it's not expensive."
"This is not an expensive solution and we are using the standard license."
"The price falls in the middle range—not overly expensive but not extremely affordable either."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
30%
Computer Software Company
11%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Government
16%
Insurance Company
12%
Computer Software Company
10%
University
10%
 

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 IBM Case Foundation?
A valuable feature includes seamless integration with the document management system, along with robust capabilities in analytics and reporting.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Case Foundation?
It was affordable, but right now, ten years later, the cost of the product is extremely high. That's why we are looking for another product.
What needs improvement with IBM Case Foundation?
The architecture is a bit difficult, but in BAW, they introduced the Business Automation Workflow. It's a bit easier compared to Case Manager. Currently, we use Case Manager, so it's a bit difficul...
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
Case Foundation, FileNet Business Process Manager
 

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
Suncorp Group Limited
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. IBM Case Foundation and other solutions. Updated: June 2025.
860,168 professionals have used our research since 2012.