IBM Case Foundation Reviews

My customer's main use cases for IBM Case Foundation include banking, such as Bank Alryad, and the state Ministry of OI. There are many banks in Saudi Arabia in the banking sector. In the banking sector, this tool helps to streamline processes for clients' onboarding.

The best features in IBM Case Foundation are its stability and ease of implementation. Knowledge management is a very good feature. There is extensive knowledge available for IBM Case Foundation.

We are using workflow capabilities of IBM Case Foundation, such as pipelines for vacation requests and electronic services, loan forms, and it is very easy for implementation. It speeds up many tasks.

We face some challenges with IBM Case Foundation from our customers, particularly with administration and configuration. We face many issues and open tickets with IBM regarding that, especially some integrations with multi-LDAP.

They should add more integration modules for IBM Case Foundation because some integrations are not found there, such as different third-party solutions including Liferay or other portals.

I have been working with IBM Case Foundation for more than three years.

For the initial setup, IBM Case Foundation is easy to set up if you have experience in IBM products and follow the documentation.

The deployment part takes a maximum of two or three working days if all prerequisites are ready because it depends on the design for the processes and the prerequisites, including connectivity.

For stability, we have not faced any issues because the number of users is not huge; we have around a maximum of 300 or 350 users, and I have not received any complaints about performance. This might change in the future when we add more services, but currently, with around 12 services, there are no issues.

We have not faced any issues with scalability in IBM Case Foundation; we make high availability but until now there has not been any issue.

My opinion on technical support from IBM is very supportive. I appreciate IBM support because they have extensive knowledge, and the knowledge base is very huge. They help us significantly.

I would rate the IBM support as nine out of ten.

I have experience with other IBM solutions, including IBM FileNet, IBM DataPower, IBM webMethods, and IBM InfoSphere, along with many other IBM products.

For the initial setup, IBM Case Foundation is easy to set up if you have experience in IBM products and follow the documentation.

The deployment part takes a maximum of two or three working days if all prerequisites are ready because it depends on the design for the processes and the prerequisites, including connectivity.

I am an implementer.

The tool is expensive for my customers; it is very expensive, more than other solutions. Some customers say it is more expensive.

The license cost for Cloud Pak is per user and increases with the number of users.

We are still working with DataPower Gateway with IBM solutions, but they will move to webMethods from DataPower, IBM.

We still use IBM FileNet for the FileNet.

We have already integrated IBM Case Foundation with IBM Content Management and are using IBM Content Navigator as an interface in Content Engine and Content Management for lifecycle documents.

I do not use analytics for operational insights.

We work in banking, but not in healthcare.

Currently, my customers are using it on-premises, and security-wise it is fine.

For Saudi Arabia, 300 users represent a medium business.

I recommend IBM Case Foundation; it is the best in BPM solutions, and I support it.

It is the best because it has stability, very good stability. IBM has good stability, and performance-wise it is also easy for deployment. From the GUI, you can make many changes, and it is low code; we did not write much code because the BPM design is a very good solution.

My total rating for IBM Case Foundation is 8.5 out of 10.

Basically, we have some different business processes that we are implementing in different branches. So we are using it for tracking purposes, to automate all the documents through business processes, and to maintain the repository.

Basically, IBM is a more mature product in terms of security, for audit purposes and especially for the repository. We have data of almost 3 TB, and we have so many files, almost 10 million documents are there in the repository.

We didn't integrate our product with any other third-party tool, but we developed an application to integrate over this repository with a third-party application.

It's not easy to integrate because IBM doesn't support any customization of this product.

The only thing is that we can easily track where the application is in the process, from manual to automation.

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.

I have been using it for the last 10 to 11 years. They released their product with version 5.6 or 5.7. After that, they rearranged all these products and changed the name of the complete suite to Business Automation Workflow.

It's stable.

They're not providing complete technical support.

Neutral

The setup is a bit complex. ECM is a complete suite, and there are so many products that are integrated with each other. So, it's not easy.

For maintenance purposes, we are currently on an older version of the Linux operating system, and Linux doesn't support upgrading the environment from 6 to 7. We are stuck and cannot update the current environment. So, in some aspects, IBM is not supporting us. If you want to upgrade, you have to do it yourself. They are just supporting their own product, not cross-platform upgrades.

There was a team who installed this complete suite, and it took, I think, one week to complete the solution and configuration.

There is a return on investment in terms of cost savings as well as production maturity and security. We needed a mature product for automation.

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.

BAW, we didn't use BAW. We use Case Manager. We can use Case Manager, but we are moving towards BAW. That's why we are interested to compare BAW and SAP OpenText.

Overall, I would rate it an eight out of ten.

It is well-suited for financial management alongside other products. It is specifically designed for business process automation, providing a platform to streamline and manage various aspects of case-related information, and facilitating efficient and automated business workflows.

The designer is extremely user-friendly. A valuable feature includes seamless integration with the document management system, along with robust capabilities in analytics and reporting.

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.

I have been working with it for ten years.

I would rate its stability capabilities eight out of ten.

It provides good scalability abilities.

Support can be problematic at times; their responsiveness is not consistently reliable. I would rate it six out of ten.

Neutral

We utilized Microsoft SharePoint, Documentum, and various other open-source solutions.

The initial setup was straightforward.

The deployment duration varies based on the chosen environment, whether on-premise or cloud. For on-premise installations, the process is time-consuming, typically taking around a week due to the need for meticulous configuration, especially when dealing with complex scenarios such as standard loans and integrated storage with multiple other products. I handle everything from installation to troubleshooting, support, training, and maintenance.

The price falls in the middle range—not overly expensive but not extremely affordable either. I would rate it five out of ten.

Overall, I would rate it eight out of ten.

We use Case Foundation as an ECM platform to store all the shared privileges and default settings that I manage for security and sandboxing. 

Case Foundation provides a strong security boost.

IBM needs to update the user interfaces of all its products to make them more intuitive and accessible to beginners. Compared to Microsoft products, IBM solutions are less user-friendly. IBM programs are hard to master. It's a problem in my region because it's hard to find IT staff who can work with IBM.

Another issue I have is that IBM sometimes removes features without explanation. It could be to improve performance, but they should notify us when they're removing these functions. It's always a surprise when we update it, and something is gone. 

I began using Case Foundation in 2008.

IBM Case Foundation is stable. 

I can scale Case Foundation out. 

IBM support could be improved. The frontline support isn't very good at all, and it takes us a long time to escalate to Level 3. We've had language issues. They assigned us someone in the region after about 10 emails. We were struggling with this issue for nearly a year. 

I haven't worked with any other solutions, but I'm familiar with OpenText. I have also worked with some Cisco solutions, but they're not comparable to Case Foundation. 

The deployment was greatly simplified when IBM acquired FileNet, which helps you install in batches. Previously, we relied on vendors to deploy for the whole development cycle. Now, I'm working for a bank, so everything needs to be done in-house.

I rate IBM Case Foundation one out of 10 for affordability. It's expensive in my country. However, if I moved to the Gulf area, it might become eight out of 10. 

I rate IBM Case Foundation eight out of 10. 

We have a contract with the customer. It is a support contract around the finance platform, which includes, among others, Case Foundation and IBM Content Navigator.

The use case depends on the customers. Sometimes it is used in the front end for users. Sometimes it is used out as an ESP, just offering backend services. 

It's great for the financial sector. When we are working in Business Logic, it's great, especially when we are talking about putting together some Business Process Management workflows.

It's very easy. It's very simple to maintain, which is not the case for other products.

The solution is stable. 

It is scalable. 

Once clients go to the cloud and want to roll back to on-premises, they find that to be very difficult. 

The initial setup can be complex. 

The cloud version could use more stability. 

We've used the solution for a while. I've used it for eight years. 

The solution is stable and the performance is good. It's reliable. There are no bugs or glitches and it doesn't crash or freeze. 

The solution is scalable. It's no problem when it comes to expanding the solution. Of course, it depends on the hardware. If you plan for scalability in the hardware, you'll be fine. 

I've dealt with support. They are okay. 

Positive

I'm working with lots of products, especially ECM, Enterprise Content Management and BPM, and Business Process Management.

We previously used Microsoft SharePoint.

I didn't switch since I'm native. I'm a consultant in the ECM and BPM area. I'm working with a lot. I'm a consultant, effectively in IBM Finance. However, I'm also a Functional or Business Consultant and Technical Consultant in other products also.

It can be difficult to set up. This is true, especially for someone who doesn't know the product.

It's very important to have an understanding. It's a good product. However, you have to put in lots of time to really understand the platform and to have some skills.

The deployment itself takes several days. 

The maintenance can be done by one person, although it would be challenging. 

We handle the deployment ourselves. We do not need any outside assistance. 

I don't have insights into the exact pricing. 

I'm not a user. I'm a consultant. My company is a partner with IBM.

I'm not in the latest version. The version I use depends on the customer's version. Not all customers are in the last upgraded version.

I'd recommend the solution to others. 

I would rate the solution eight out of ten.

Mostly we are using the solution for the BPM part, however, we are also using all of the content manager parts for every customer. Every customer had these repositories deployed and used. And in a couple of customers, we are using the BPM part of the solution for customizing the business processes.

The most valuable feature is the content manager part of the file as it is very stable, robust, and reliable. If you had to manage a couple of millions of documents you could do so without a problem. 

The BPM part of the solution is also okay, however, we don't know if IBM will focus on the BPM part of this newest business automation workflow. We found that FileNet BPM was okay, with a couple of flags, yet still mostly okay. 

For the account manager part, I don't know what could be improved. Everything looks fine. However, for the BPM part, they could improve some user experience or user interface features. We always have problems with the user interface. From version 3.5, we're using the workplace for the application. This was an IBM FileNet application that we were customized and adjusted for the customer. However, they had some private web application toolkit for building this application. It was not very open. We didn't use any other open-source features for improving that application. After that, they had an IBM content navigator, which is very customizable yet not very user-friendly - especially for our developer. 

The other thing that they could improve is that when you change the workflow definition from the BPM, then when all workflows are started with the older definition there where they have to stay with the older definition and don't see the change for the older workflows. You have to wait for new workflows to start. Changes that you made in the BPM part of the FileNet, especially in the process designer, are not visible for the older workflows, and that's the biggest problem we had besides the user interface.

The solution can be quite expensive. 

We've been using the solution for 15 years now. 

The stability is okay. The stability is very good, especially with the content engine part. The reliability is also okay. I don't have any problems with that.

We had more than 3,000 people using the solution. I'm not sure which license deal we share with IBM, however, we probably have more than a couple of hundred people using FileNet so far.

We've used the solution a couple of times for some problems that we had in the production environment. The support was excellent. Excellent. We have no complaints.

For me, now, the initial setup is easy. That said, in the beginning, it is very, very confusing as you have to build and install many, many other things before the actual installation of IBM software. However, when they changed the process engine applications, which were before .NET and now is Java, it became easier. Still, you have to read the documentation carefully in terms of the installation guide. If you do, everything will be fine especially if you follow the rules. At the outset, it was not very, very straightforward, however, I must say.

The solution has the kind of licensing model where you can use FileNet a couple of times in a month. Many customers in our company are using that kind of license. We're not always connected. We sell the solution to our customers and they always find the solution very expensive. It's not a cheap product.

We're an IBM partner.

We use a few different versions of the solution, including 5.1, the narrow version, and 5.5.6, the highest version.

Whether this solution makes sense depends on a customer's needs. If the customer wants to implement some business processes that involve many documents and collaboration spaces, and that includes some business processes where many people are involved, Case Foundation is a very good solution for them.

I'd rate the solution a nine out of ten. The product is very, very reliable, and very stable - especially the content manager part of the FileNet. It was very easy to build some business processes in the BPM model of FileNet. However, we'd like to see improvements in the user interface and improvements to the IBM content navigator part of the solution.

We have an in-house management solution that is built on top of IBM Case Foundation. For this reason, we have to be up-to-date with the current versions.

Within my organization, including engineers and the testing team, there are about 70 employees. If we include our clients that we assist with deployment and training, then we are talking about tens of thousands of people.

For each project, our development team consists of a few project managers, one systems engineer, and a few developers.

The content management is great. It features row-based access. It allows for broad-based access not only to the documents themselves but within the content. You can use the templates from existing documents for employee onboarding.

There is also a predefined search option that uses icons to retrieve any information you have from different sites and folders.

90% of the feedback we receive states that the UI is not very user-friendly.

The icons and images should be bigger. Initially, I felt a bit lost but after a while, I got used to it — with a bit of practice, you can get used to anything.

From my first impression, it just looked like a white page with some small icons. Another thing that is really high in demand here, especially in Qatar, is proper Arabic translation capabilities. Arabic is very high in demand, not just in Qatar but in the Middle East as a whole and Africa. When you translate it into Arabic, the labels and the interface translate pretty poorly — interface only, capability wise, it's fine.

I have been using this solution since 2016.

IBM Case Foundation is both scalable and flexible. Our clients also agree that it's extendible, flexible and stable.

We deliver support to our clients. We have a full team that consists of around nine engineers. We have channels through email, phone, and a portal where our customers can ask questions and receive support. The portal is monitored by a hub controlled by the ministry of transportation and communication.

This hub is the center of the whole government that provides the licenses. They check the quality of the vendors: how they interact with them, the support level; all of this is monitored by them.

I used to use SharePoint, but I can't compare the two. I used SharePoint simply for static content and website building.

I was not involved in the installation process. We have a team of engineers who handled the initial setup.

When we installed it over top of our existing solution, overall, deployment took us eight days — four days for staging and four days until we were ready for production.

For Case Foundation alone, implementation takes no more than six days.

IBM Case Foundation is a little expensive.

It can be purchased separately, but it's also sold and included in the Automation Pack from IBM.

A cloud pack for automation consists of Case Foundation, VPM, Case Manager, Decision Management, Data Cap — all of them together under one license. In this way, the price is reasonable because they are all together.

I would definitely recommend this solution.

On a scale from one to ten, I would give IBM Case Foundation a rating of eight.

We use this product mostly as a document database.

This product has helped us because we are a financial institution and it works as a repository for unstructured documents.

The most valuable feature is its stability, which is why we are using it.

This is a very stable solution and I use it on a daily basis. It has not been a problem.

Scalability has not been a problem. We have more than 400 users.

The setup and deployment were completed before I joined the company.

This is not an expensive solution and we are using the standard license.

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I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.

I am a consultant and this is one of the solutions that I work with. This product is used by very large production companies for creating workflows.

It is well integrated with documents and document management from IBM. It's a data-driven solution that is very good.

It is easy to set up workflows that notify the user depending on certain events.

This product is still attached to some things from the past, on the way that it was built, and there are some things that should be improved, but those who work with it know how to work around these difficulties.

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. You either stop the process and relaunch it at the place that it was, or you're going to leave with a process that is running. There are other products like IBM Lombardi or IBM BPM where it's easy, under certain conditions, to change the running workflows to the new business logic.

I have been working with IBM Case Foundation since 1998, just over 20 years ago.

Case Foundation is a stable product.

This is a scalable solution. My clients for this product are very large companies such as banks, IT, phone companies, and government.

In 2006, they were bought by IBM and the IBM technical support handles requests. The quality of support depends a lot on the people that you talk to. IBM has many people and many products, and sometimes you find people with different levels of experience. Because of this, it can take them longer to get answers to your question. That said, when you find the right person, it's okay.

I think that the initial setup is usually okay if you just run the installation and use the default settings. You won't have any problems and it's easy, but there are a lot of technologies behind it. There is the verification server, IBM WebSphere or Oracle WebLogic. The database can be Microsoft SQL, IBM DB2, or Oracle, and they can be running either on Linux or Windows.

With so much technology that can be used in different configurations, if you aren't familiar with all of them then it could be hard. At the same time, the solution is versatile and can work well with many different technologies.

My advice for anybody who is implementing Case Foundation is to keep the design as simple as possible because the workflows are very static. If you try to change it a lot, you will make it very complex and you will have problems. You should use and maintain business rules outside of the main workflow because if you have some rule that changes then the workflow stays the same, most of the time.

Overall, this is a good product.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We are providing services for our customers whose primary use case is mainly for those processes that are not covered through any ERP or MIS system or that need to be automated.

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 interface needs to be more user-friendly.

In the next release, I would like to see better integration with ERP tools and an improved interface.

I have been familiar with the IBM Case Foundation solution for three to four years.

This solution is stable and we have not had any issues to this point.

We have not explored the scalability at this time.

We have contacted technical support and it's fine. We are satisfied with the support overall.

The initial setup is straightforward, but because the interface needs to be improved, it gets complex. You have to develop more and more, which involves some coding and development to ease it out.

The length of deployment depends on the requirements. If it is a small process, five to six nodes, it's a matter of one to two days. If it is a complex process and the rules are complex then it can take weeks.

The method of deployment depends on the customer's use case requirements.

Pricing is in the mid-range, it is not cheap, but it's not expensive. Two models are available and it depends on which one you are using.

I would rate this solution a seven out of ten.