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IBM BPM vs TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM 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)
7th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.6
Number of Reviews
112
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (6th), Process Automation (6th)
TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
31st
Average Rating
7.4
Reviews Sentiment
6.5
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of August 2025, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of IBM BPM is 6.8%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is 0.6%, up from 0.5% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

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.
Ray Ochieng - PeerSpot reviewer
Powerful workflow definition enhances operational stability and efficiency
TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is powerful for defining workflows. It is low code, so you don't need a lot of coding, and tasks are just drag and drop. It is also very stable as we haven't had issues with it going down or encountering any operational issues for a long time. The stability and rich features in workflow definition make it a valuable tool.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"The possibility to add Java code as embedded .jar, that increases the flexibility of the solution."
"They have some quick-win programs that are designed to come in, they'll bring a developer in and they'll work with your developer to get you started. That's what we did and that worked really great. We got an understanding of the product, we got an understanding of how to deploy the product. And when we were done with that engagement, we were off and running."
"IBM's deployment box is one huge black box. We can create all the services with our own code or without a codebase, however, we have a huge amount of space with practically no limitation."
"Some of the features that I like the most are team management and process performance. They are both very useful and very powerful with regard to the workflow."
"We have automated processes with IBM BPM and DocuSign. Its valuable features include low-code, timer, etc. It makes it simple to implement the products. We generate reports using the solution."
"It is efficient in reducing costs."
"This solution has streamlined our operation and improved the TAT of sales, operations, and underwriters."
"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."
"TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is powerful for defining workflows."
"It is the best product because of its stability. ActiveMatrix 5.x is highly stable in production, and the downtime is very low. I have worked on a lot of service projects, and the engine is very stable, robust, and scalable. The development and change requests can be pushed quickly, and the mapper activity and SSLT kind of features are also good. It is easy to do changes, testing, and deployment. Its deployment is very easy, and we can automate a lot of scripts for our on-premises solution. I work for an investment bank, and we have automated a lot of processes for our customers. Previously, we used to develop scripts and tools. With version 6.x, everything is moved to Maven and other things. Environment handling is done mostly through DevOps tools. As compared to Mulesoft, the deployment and configuration are very easy in TIBCO."
"TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is powerful for defining workflows."
"The capacity for distributing the jobs in a workflow is an important feature."
"For specific situations this can be a good solution and a simplified interface to work with."
"The product's initial setup phase is straightforward."
"The scheduling and the calendar are very useful."
 

Cons

"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."
"They could provide case studies to investigate and understand the functionality of business processes before development."
"Needs better reporting. I do not think that we are fully taking advantage of what it already has yet."
"Finding errors and bugs on the system is not easy. We can't seem to use the events or logs to find them, so it makes it difficult to debug the system. They really need to work on their debugging features to make is much, much easier. It would improve the solution considerably and should be something they add in a future release."
"​The initial setup was complex. It is not always easy to launch a new platform and it needed better coordination with IBM."
"They should incorporate an API gateway functionality within it to simplify integrations."
"We need process monitoring. It is somewhat complex to monitor all the processes which work."
"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."
"My experience with tech support has not been very good. Most of the time, issues are escalated to level three, where they are either unresolved or take two weeks to address."
"ActiveMatrix is in the middle field. MuleDB is more on the engineering side with Java and other things. SnapLogic is there are on the higher side with very low coding. TIBCO stays in the middle like IBM or Oracle. TIBCO can move towards IBM's way of doing. IBM has a big market and many varieties of products and good integration, which TIBCO doesn't have. It can have better integration. TIBCO's transition to the cloud is a little slow. As compared to Dell, Boomi, and Mulesoft. TIBCO took the steps a little later. TIBCO's ID was far better and easier to work with previously. TIBCO's 5.x ID was very good, and the development environment and the transition were easy. Version 6.5 onwards, it is a stable product, but it would be good if they can do something similar to version 5.4 with version 6. They should concentrate on this API market. It will give them the strength and the ability to grab the market back."
"The maintenance of the package could be improved."
"It is not lightweight and requires a lot of disk space, memory, and CPU."
"Technical support needs to be streamlined."
"The scalability of the product is an area of concern where improvements are required."
"The product is missing some means of addressing more complex BPM constructs and should interface with more platforms easily."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Starting out with Express can also help reduce the cost for adopting the product."
"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."
"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."
"Its price is on the higher side, and it can be improved. Its licensing is on a yearly basis. There are no additional costs."
"I rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten."
"We have a yearly licensing model. It is not expensive. There are no addition costs to the standard license."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a ten."
"The price of the solution is fair for an enterprise solution that has both cloud and on-premise deployments and when comparing to competitors. Recently IBM has introduced Cloud Pak which allows for more flexible licensing options for automation and other features."
"There are some discussions about perpetual licenses and conversions, but I'm not much familiar with them."
"TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM is an expensive tool compared to others."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
29%
Computer Software Company
10%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Insurance Company
6%
Financial Services Firm
36%
Manufacturing Company
14%
Computer Software Company
12%
Comms Service Provider
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 TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM?
The product's initial setup phase is straightforward.
What needs improvement with TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM?
It is not lightweight and requires a lot of disk space, memory, and CPU. Making it lightweight so it can run on a minimum processor and less memory would be beneficial. Additionally, the current wo...
What is your primary use case for TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM?
We are using TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM for network deployment workflows. For example, if a customer is interested in getting a NetWorker, there is a workflow where we log in, get the customer details,...
 

Also Known As

WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
No data available
 

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
ADIS, Citi, Bank of Montreal, First Citizens Bank
Find out what your peers are saying about IBM BPM vs. TIBCO ActiveMatrix BPM and other solutions. Updated: July 2025.
865,295 professionals have used our research since 2012.