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IBM BPM vs IBM WebSphere Application Server comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Mar 5, 2025

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 Application Infrastructure
8th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
111
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (8th), Process Automation (6th)
IBM WebSphere Application S...
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
5th
Average Rating
7.6
Reviews Sentiment
6.8
Number of Reviews
31
Ranking in other categories
Application Server (5th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of May 2025, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 3.2%, up from 2.8% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM WebSphere Application Server is 12.0%, up from 10.0% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Application Infrastructure
 

Featured Reviews

Muhammad Kamran - PeerSpot reviewer
Has efficient processes and intuitive workflow with many valuable features
You will have access to make any needed changes. Additionally, the review will be published on PeerSpot.com in written or audio format, available to other people. You can stay anonymous if you wish. Notifications and the use of the review are subject to PeerSpot's terms of use, which you can find at PeerSpot.com/TOS. I would give the solution an overall rating of ten out of ten points.
BharathirajaSukumar - PeerSpot reviewer
Efficient load balancing and the clustering, achieved by using the deployment manager, is valuable
I believe that the system is already good. However, for improvement or enhancement, it is user-friendly, but it could offer better choices on the front end for different aspects or options. Sometimes, I have to search extensively for features, as there are no upfront tabs. There is a lack of visible, easy, user-friendly, and straightforward options for the number of features.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The process creation."
"We use it for automating certain processes which previously took a lot of time for agents to set up different products for customers. They would have to enter a lot of different systems. This has now mostly been automated."
"The performance is fine."
"The integration and design are valuable features."
"One of the reasons for adopting this solution ten years ago was its ease of use. It had a lot of off-the-shelf functionality, and it did not need to be developed specifically for the project that we were implementing. That was the main reason for adopting it in the beginning."
"The initial setup process is easy."
"One thing that I love about them is that they make it easier to integrate with other systems, especially with the use of smaller files."
"Automating the whole workflow process to give our data steward the ability to take actions rapidly, and making sure we have all the data synced within the different platforms that we are using."
"The scalability of the product is quite good."
"IBM WebSphere Application Server is easy to use."
"IBM WAS is extremely scalable. It is easy to add additional servers and to divide the load over servers in all kinds of ways."
"Ease of administration: It has an Integrated Solutions Console, what we call the administrative console, with very detailed configurations and Help pages for each configurable item."
"The most valuable features are its user-friendliness and reliability in terms of application hosting."
"The most valuable feature of this solution is Portal Virtualization."
"IBM WAS is the backbone for our enterprise content management suite which delivers the primary processes for our customers. Without a good application server, it would be hard to provide a secure layer of midddleware upon which the other applications run. IBM WAS improves the stability of the entire solution and provides a high quality platform for running web-based solutions."
"Without the Admin Console it would be very hard to configure JVM settings, JDBC datasources, mail session settings, and security providers."
 

Cons

"We thought there might have been a little more discussion early on about, "Hey, if you're doing this, set it up this way," or some best practices or some guidance that we didn't get."
"Process versioning was tricky, not straightforward."
"Also, we would like to see integration with artificial intelligence, machine learning-type of technical capabilities. Right now, there are a lot Watson libraries out there. Building those integrations more, out-of-the-box, from IBM would be a good direction."
"IBM BPM uses JavaScript as a programming language for the server-side. I don’t know why it’s not Java, as it’s more powerful and the JavaScript part is translated into Java anyway."
"The people working on the front desk are having some problem with managing the documentation. For instance, they get a picture, and if the picture comes rotated 90 degrees, together with a picture that is not rotated, they have some problems dealing with that, technically. There are some minor aspects that on the usability side that are still lacking. That has to do with FileNet, too, I'm talking about the suite together."
"We are a government organization, and we are the largest government power sector in India. We generate around 30% of power in India. Therefore, our processes are quite complex. Although IBM BPM is a low-code or no-code software, if you want to have extremely complex workflows, just the business process diagrams are not helpful in creating those workflows. While implementing complex workflows, only the process flow diagrams did not help us. We had to write a lot of Java scripts and Java queries to achieve what we wanted. Its integration capabilities with the SAP environment have to be improved. At present, we are only talking at the web services environment level. Its price also needs to be improved. It is currently expensive. Previously, Active Directory required a heterogeneous environment, but now they want a homogeneous environment. We had onboarded employees through Microsoft Active Directory, and now I have to implement Microsoft AD only from the cloud for my vendors."
"They could provide case studies to investigate and understand the functionality of business processes before development."
"Importing and exporting between multiple environments is more difficult with other tools."
"I find the server okay, however, using the Maker instance, the Moving instance, and the Change instance is a little bit complicated without WebSphere knowledge."
"When we run into memory or locking issues, we resort to using third-party tools. However, it would be preferable to have native tools for debugging this type of problem."
"WebSphere is very cumbersome and not user-friendly. It used to have its own JVM, which presented challenges such as different architecture and memory leaks."
"The security could be better."
"Initial setup is very simple. Just use the IBM Installation Manager and add the packages. The install wizard takes care of the rest. The only thing that can be difficult is to find the right packages on the IBM website, because of all the changes that IBM does on its website(s)."
"The availability of the solution needs improvement."
"It should be able to serve more concurrent requests like Oracle. Oracle has more powerful stability, availability, and real-time serving."
"Based on the field and based on the build that was provided, we've noticed a lot of constraints in terms of the performance now."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Starting out with Express can also help reduce the cost for adopting the product."
"It gives us a good return on investment."
"The price is good but could be a little lower."
"I give the pricing an eight out of ten."
"IBM BPM is expensive, so most large companies opt for IBM based on their licensing options."
"The pricing is very high."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a ten."
"Price wise, IBM BPM is cheaper than other similar solutions and has excellent pricing."
"The solution is quite expensive."
"The price of this product is higher than that of competitors."
"The licensing cost is 1,000 of euros for a 30-year table."
"We used to pay about $100,000-$120,000 US or somewhere around there. That was a bit cost-prohibitive for us to continue."
"It's expensive."
"If your application is just a web app that does not need to scale big, you can obtain a single core license of WAS Express edition, which has almost the same features with limited processing cores. If you manage a very big application farm (i.e. need to run 10 or more WAS servers) it is better to get IBM WAS Hypervisor Edition."
"It costs more than some of the others, but, you get what you pay for."
"We pay around $200,000 annually."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
32%
Computer Software Company
14%
Insurance Company
7%
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 IBM WebSphere Application Server?
Network Deployment is the most useful feature for scalability. It has many features within the standard WebSphere Application Server edition.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM WebSphere Application Server?
In Korea, when you buy IBM iOS, the WebSphere base version is included with iOS. That means no additional cost.
What needs improvement with IBM WebSphere Application Server?
I find the server okay, however, using the Maker instance, the Moving instance, and the Change instance is a little bit complicated without WebSphere knowledge.
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
WebSphere Application Server
 

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
TalkTalk, Property management group, E.SUN Bank, Ohio National Financial Services, Aviarc, Cincom Systems, FJA-US, D+H, Staples, Michigan Municipal League
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. IBM WebSphere Application Server and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
851,491 professionals have used our research since 2012.