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IBM BPM vs Oracle SOA Suite 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) (5th), Process Automation (4th)
Oracle SOA Suite
Ranking in Application Infrastructure
9th
Average Rating
8.0
Reviews Sentiment
7.1
Number of Reviews
65
Ranking in other categories
SOA Governance (1st)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of April 2025, in the Application Infrastructure category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 3.0%, up from 2.9% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of Oracle SOA Suite is 3.9%, down from 4.7% 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.
MANOHAR SADDALA - PeerSpot reviewer
Enables seamless integration with multiple systems
I would rate the scalability a seven out of ten. It's not much more dynamic, not as dynamic as you may think, like seeing it in the cloud. In order to use it, you need to have the download servers and then scale up your systems. Oracle SOA Suites serves as a middle layer between applications. For example, let's say you have SAP, and we have Salesforce or Oracle ERP system. Users connect to those systems and perform certain activities or transactions on the applications. Now, if any data needs to be synchronized or any integration needs to happen between these applications, we use the Oracle SOA Suite. It acts as the bridge between the applications, not between the users. It's like having endpoints between the applications. Currently, we have 20 endpoints; 20 systems are connected to it, which is great. Oracle SOA Suite is being used daily. We are using it to its maximum potential.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"It is easy to take a requirement, put it in the code, and deploy it."
"I think the best way it can be it improved, is to make it easier to install. It's a very complicated piece of software, and there are a lot of things you have to do to get it set up. It's not just running an installer. You install WebSphere. You install the BPM product, and there's a large host of other steps you have to do: run queries against the database, you have to manually configure a bunch of properties files for your environment. I think if they could streamline all that, so it wasn't a considerable effort to install, that would be very useful. Because from an engineering point of view, you want to spend as little time as possible actually installing a product."
"The solution is more customizable than IBM FileNet."
"I liked its robustness the most. It was a very robust platform in my experience. It seemed like a very stable and powerful tool for handling lots of concurrent users and hammering at the system."
"It is a stale solution."
"The most valuable feature is the ability to customize your rules and put them inside the tool."
"I like the APIs and the BPM coach is a good tool. But if I had to pick one, it would be the API."
"The new product has come out with SOA Cloud Service and Integration Analytics as well, which gives more options for clients to pick their point of requirements."
"The most valuable features for us are the APIs, which we commonly use, as well as the scheduling capabilities and file transfers."
"The most valuable feature of the facility, as the partner link, is to try to use third-party services and logic in your own vehicle to orchestrate the information."
"I would rate my experience with the initial setup an eight out of ten, where one is difficult, and ten is easy."
"The product allows you to visualize how a company is working currently by providing rich possibilities for analysis such as the audit trails and therefore shows where improvements might be valuable."
"Provides connectivity between discrete systems and has availability."
"What I like best about Oracle SOA Suite is Oracle support. I also like the tool features, especially the integration feature."
"Valuable features include connectors and BAM."
 

Cons

"When you have to integrate files for enterprise applications."
"There is room for improvement in the stability."
"Our developers are complaining that it's too complex to maintain."
"We would appreciate more user-friendly definitions of processes with a more user-friendly interface for documenting processes."
"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."
"There needs to be better documentation for IBM BPM in a central place. There is not any standard documentation for each component available and has been a barrier for developers."
"Where it can be improved is Integration. I think that the direction that IBM is taking now, to have something that is much more integrated, that can be seen as one single solution, is clearly the right way."
"The front end is not customised for a good user experience."
"The interface is too complicated. Making modifications still requires too much technical knowledge."
"I want to see easier integration connections with other cloud-based tools."
"I would like to see divided containers more separately as a microservice."
"The solutions can improve the communication or translations between formats, such as JSON and XML. The JSON REST API could improve."
"The technical support is good, we have premier support which costs extra."
"If the disk space expansion can be made more flexible, not requiring a database restart, it would be a major benefit."
"Another area of improvement is performance. Because with multiple solutions connecting to the SOA platform, the performance of the SOA platform can be affected in time. So, that could be one area that could be improved with the SOA."
"SOA"
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"The product is expensive considering the hardware and software costs."
"It's expensive. All software is always extremely high. The manufacturing cost that we have compared to the selling cost, it's not like you're building a house or building a car. But putting that aside, considering that it's expensive, it's a lot of money. If you compare it with some of the other alternatives in the market, it's a similar price. For instance, if you compare it with Pegasystems, it's a similar price."
"IBM BPM is expensive, so most large companies opt for IBM based on their licensing options."
"It is pricey."
"Licensing is managed by the client, but we know it is yearly. Camunda is relatively cheaper. There is not much difference in pricing of IBM and PEGA. For large licensing, there are discounts as well."
"I wish it was less expensive. I don't know why their pricing model is so high for a piece of software that could benefit so many. It just seems to me that they could have a lower cost, maybe with fewer features or whatever, but it should be possible to do a lower cost workflow software that uses the same interface and underlying engine but does not cost so much that you have to be a Fortune 50 company to buy it. It is annoying to me. There are a lot of solutions that IBM has that are really powerful but nobody can afford them. They know their business, but I still feel that there are a lot of customers who would benefit from this sort of thing. I don't know what this elitism is all about. I am sure they have people doing the money numbers, but it seems like you can make a lot more money by selling it to way more people for a little bit less."
"When considering the features of the solution the price is expensive compared to competitors."
"It has a low cost to implement. You'll get your money back in the same year that you complete the project."
"Based on my knowledge, Oracle SOA Suite doesn't have user-based licensing. It has a system-based licensing model, so you pay for whole systems. Oracle SOA Suite is an expensive solution, so it's a four out of ten for me."
"The pricing is not very high as compared to its competitors."
"Oracle pricing is expensive. Support is based on your license. AWS is much better than Oracle in this regard."
"Oracle SOA Suite is an expensive solution."
"This product is WebLogic based, hence it can be both resource hungry as well as expensive from a licensing point of view."
"The product is moderately priced."
"It is necessary to evaluate the requirement regarding the platform usage and what the main operation area of the platform will be."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Computer Software Company
20%
Financial Services Firm
15%
Government
8%
Educational Organization
6%
 

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 Oracle SOA Suite?
The solution's XSLT or XSL Transformation feature was very useful.
What needs improvement with Oracle SOA Suite?
The solution’s initial setup is complex and could be improved. A big challenge for Oracle SOA Suite is that you don't get too many technical resources.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
SOA Suite
 

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
7-Eleven, Arcor SAIC, Banca Transilvania, Eaton Corporation, Emdeon, Ferrovial, Griffith University, National Instruments, Pella Corporation, Vodafone Group Plc,
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. Oracle SOA Suite and other solutions. Updated: April 2025.
845,564 professionals have used our research since 2012.