IBM Operational Decision Manager Reviews

We use the solution to resolve complex business rules for our customers.

The solution is robust, scalable, and easy to maintain. We can also implement complex business rules using it.

The solution's licensing cost needs improvement.

I have been using the solution for eight years now.

I rate the solution's stability a ten out of ten.

I rate the solution's scalability a nine out of ten.

We used a Java-based approach for the customization of business rules earlier. It was time-consuming for development. Later, we switched to ODM as it is robust and scalable.

The solution's initial setup process is easy. I rate the process an eight out of ten. It takes a few hours to complete. Also, it requires one or two resources to maintain it.

I rate the solution's pricing an eight out of ten.

I recommend the solution to others and rate it a nine out of ten.

We use ODM to set complex business rules. For instance, we deploy this solution for most of our banking customers because there are frequent changes in the policies and business rules. These are complex to manage for enterprise applications. 

ODM provides an efficient, comprehensive way to manage all the applications. Regardless of the BPM tool we are using, we choose ODM because it's flexible.

The only thing we have trouble with is integrating IBM ODM with the cloud. The product is on-prem, and we need to migrate the rules to the cloud. It's a hectic process. 

I've been using IBM ODM for about 10 years.

ODM's stability is fine now. We haven't had any issues lately, but it was a little unstable initially. We got it stabilized after a few hiccups.

We switched from version 8 of IBM ODM to version 11 on the cloud for a few customers, but it is still on-prem for some. The cloud edition has greater scalability.

We contacted IBM support for one issue because we had trouble migrating the business rules for OpenShift. The documentation says it is should be easy to do in OpenShift. The support was good. 

The initial setup is straightforward.

There's definitely a return, but I can't quantify it because it varies among customers. 

I rate IBM Operational Decision Manager eight out of 10. I recommend ODM because it's better at managing complex rules than any other product. Other solutions aren't adequate for the enterprise level. It can handle any rule at any level of complexity.

My primary use case is to manage rules for the business.

ODM allows for faster deployment.

The most valuable features are the Decision center, a web UI that allows us to make direct edits to our policies or rules; the Rule Execution Server, which allows us to analyze the rules and performance; and Rule Designer, where you can write rules and decision tables. 

The documentation has become more optimized. 

An area for improvement is that the documentation for ODM is not very clear. It has improved. There are very few open-source videos online to learn from. But that is a challenge for a lot of companies. 

I've been working with this solution for over six years.

The tools have good stability and performance.

This solution is scalable.

The technical support could be improved.

The initial setup is a little complex, but deployment can be done at the click of a button.

ODM is suitable for all sizes of companies. I would rate it as eight out of ten.

ODM is mainly used in banks to handle large numbers of transactions.

I've been working with this solution since 2012.

ODM's most valuable features are that it's easy to define and divide business rules, and it can handle very large numbers of transactions per second.

ODM could be improved with better integration with other platforms. In the next release, IBM should include integrated analysis tools, summary metrics, and a friendlier way to integrate with dashboards or columns.

ODM is very stable and has good uptime. 

Scalability was the main reason we chose ODM, as it can handle almost a magnitude more transactions per second than its competitors. 

IBM's technical support is good - they're good at communication and are really helpful.

The initial setup was straightforward as we got a lot of help from IBM and were able to hire people who were already trained in the product.

ODM's pricing could be more competitive as there are open-source business rules engines that are becoming standard, like Drooms from the Java Open Source Enterprise Suite, although ODM is a better product than those. 

If implementing ODM, I'd recommend finding a partner with experience who understands the responsibilities and functions this product should provide, which can ease the transition. I would give ODM a rating of nine out of ten.

Objective: The primary use case is being able to expose business logic to
non-technical users. This logic is traditionally hidden within code. ODM
exposes the logic out to the business users for them to be able to
manage it over time without IT involvement.

Before ODM, all the rules were configured on legacy
systems we're transforming all this into a new set of technologies such
as REST microservices, cassandra and with IBM ODM so that Business Users will be able to easily change the rules.

Deployment is done on the client-side only. Business User can update rules through UI

I have used it for few projects in which number of business logic rules varied from the 70  to about 1,800 rules.

There is an increase in productivity, agility and responsiveness because after it is configured once in the environment, Business User can deploy the rules and configuring the rules and making the changes by themselves. Deployment failures have happened very few times. (So far, twice only). Only then do we get a call: "We are experiencing issues." So productivity, being on the developer side has improved because once I have configured the rules, I don't have to worry about them. I have time to work on other things. The Business User is able to keep changing the rules and it is very easy for them. The client is very happy.The
result is a step toward creating a more modern infrastructure, to evolving business
needs.

Apart from the cost savings, efficiency has also increased. I never thought we would be able to develop that amount of change, it is now near real-time; being from the It used to be a very time-consuming process.

Now, As soon as Business User deploys a rule, well... it gets deployed.

There's more, they can even use an Excel sheet for input for updating the rules.

The most valuable feature is the deployment part because it is very easy to deploy.

After being developed and configured once on server, even any one from a non-technical background can easily deploy it and the rules will work.

The testing part for the rules is also very easy to use.

Doesn't matter if you coding experience or not it is very user-friendly.

Configuring it on the Tomcat site and on the client's cloud environment, we faced a lot of issues. After configuring it on the Tomcat side, getting it on the Unix server was an issue.

There are two issues that I am facing right now. The first is that the errors I get from time to time are not easy to debug or easy to understand. They are very vague because if a XOM file is missing or there is a deserialization problem, on the client's side I only get a 500 Internal Server Error. To learn where the problem is, I have to go on the Rule Execution Server and test it myself. The deserialization issue is very vague. The error messages should be more straightforward and easy to understand.

I would also like to see the installation part on a single disk only, instead of on three disks. In our local environment we are installing it on Windows, and for the client side we are installing it on a Linux server. For a new user or a new developer or a fresher, it was tricky to understand which disk should be installed first, even if they're labeled Disk 1, Disk 2, Disk 3. Configuration is kind of tricky for a new person. Right now we have to use Installation Manager. It should be like installing any other software.

Finally, it should also start supporting the NoSQL DB. Currently, It does not support NoSQL. I don't know if the newer version supports it, but as far as I know it doesn't. It would make the job easier. Right now the client had to buy a MySQL license, so they are maintaining a separate database for ODM. It should be kept on a single system. NoSQL DBs are better and it can be done.

We've been using it over two years.

In terms of stability, from time to time I get runtime errors for the deserialization issue for the XOM file. I get an error on the Rule Execution Server saying, "This XOM class cannot be deserialized. Please check if it is configured properly." I have to redeploy that part from my Rule Designer. That has happened twice over the course of the project. I think someone might have changed the XOM. Otherwise, it shouldn't have occurred. On the IBM site there is not too much written about the error.

UPDATE: Changed in configurations : Issue was later resolved. Stability is great.

We have complete control over how the system is configured, managed, and run.We are using about eight server systems. In terms of scalability, it's more like a plug-and-play. We can just keep on adding however many servers we would like to add.

There was a dedicated IBM guy and we contacted him about the XOM issue but we have yet to get a substantive response. He said that it is not in his domain to fix that error. He is from the installation part only. This issue was later resolved.

Keep your rules in Excel format and they will be much easier to use and configure. A rule priority or sequence should be kept in mind: Which rule should be executed first. This should be clear for both the person who is developing the rules and the businesspeople who are going to be using them.

While ODM is an excellent business rules engine that solves a wide variety of business needs, the installation,configuration and deployment configuratiosn can be more complex than it appears on the surface. And if your business rules are incorrectly configured, you can put yourself at a major disadvantage.

I think this process can be improved. 

Drools

We use it for a cable company in a contract with Comcast.

It makes things easier for us. Productivity-wise, it helps. It has also helped to reduce operating costs by about 20 percent. In terms of decision-making it has helped some users. It has helped improve business processes. But it hasn't totally helped our decision-making.

The management features, based on the server side, have worked for us. So far, the usability is great. It's also easy to set up.

I don't see a need for additional features. I like it just the way it is. 

It does the job.

I have called technical support once or twice and they fixed the problems. I don't have any issues with tech support.

The setup is straightforward.

We did it ourselves.

It was not a large cost. It was a one-time cost.

It works. I would recommend trying it.

ODM tell us if customers are allowed to purchase specific tickets on our carrier.

It is a lot easier to make decisions using this solution. That is what it does.

It is a really good product.

It is used by business users in our organization, who are very happy with it. They can make changes on it very easily.

It has benefited our organization by having less coding changes. Thus, we save time and don't have to hire as many people.

It is way quicker to make changes and bring them to production.

Being rules, the solutions has improved business processes and case management in our organization.

It is accurate and saves us time.

It is very easy to use. We have one person works on it, building our rules, and other people can jump in and help if they need to.

It helps in keeping things logical and all in one place.

I would like to have integration of the user interfaces, and they are putting them together in the next version of the solution. There used to be two separate interfaces. Now, they are merging them into one.

It is very stable.

It is incredbly scalable. It is very easy if we need to add more rules to it. 

It is fine if we need to add more applications to run through it. That is very easy to do.

The technical support is great. IBM provides whatever we need whenever we ask them.

The initial setup was complex. Somebody else set it up, though. I wasn't involved with that.

Upon initial set up, I would get some help directly from IBM. When you set it up, make sure it is set up properly in the first place.

We used our own people for the deployment.

The solution has reduced our operating costs.

For each change, it probably saves about three weeks of coding time for a programmer.

We made a lifetime purchase. We purchased it by number of PVUs for our stage and product environments.

We are really happy with it. It is easy to use.

We have integrated this solution with other solutions. It was very easy to do, once we had a base to work with.

It could help with compliance or governance issues. It just hasn't yet.

We hope to use it for automation projects in the future.

The primary use case is being able to expose business logic to non-technical users. This logic is traditionally hidden within code. ODM exposes the logic out to the business users for them to be able to manage it over time without IT involvement.

I work with many customers across industries such as healthcare, insurance, finance, manufacturing and others.  In every industry there are business decisions that involve complex logic.  My customers are enabled to have their business teams manage this logic and to change their business rules on demand without IT involvement.  

As an implementer of IBM Operational Decision Manager, I have helped many customers improve their organization by leveraging ODM.

Operational Decision Management is a decision management solution. By the nature of it, it is helping our customer manage decisions.

For my clients, ODM gives them the flexibility to modify their decisions without the three-month or the six-month IT cycle.  The reality is that business decisions need to change at a much faster pace than what IT teams have been able to deliver.  By enabling the business users (business owners) the ability to manage these rules, we achieve two primary things:

1. Business policy can change much faster to accommodate market changes, regulation changes, competition, fraud, or what ever other conditions drive the change.


2. Provides IT departments with agility.  By offloading the maintenance of this business logic from IT, they are now available to work on providing new capabilities to the business.

For clients that have embraced ODM in this model, it has been a win-win to both the business and IT teams.

First and foremost for features, what you get out-of-the box is the most valuable. There are other solutions out there on the market, and by far, ODM is the most complete. It gives you that out-of-the-box capability, is enterprise scale, and has a lot of the internal workings to handle the complex use cases that we find out there for making business decisions.

Implementing regulations and business policies: There is a lot of business logic there. That is exactly what the solution will target.

There is some promise of how decisions could take advantage of machine learning and artificial intelligence (AI). That has been slow to develop. It is still not clear where the market will take it, but that is something that I am looking forward to down the road.  Today we augment some ODM decisions with AI and with analytics, but I expect that in the next several years we will see much more growth in this area.

ODM has recently released support for Decision Modeling and Notation (DMN) models that can be authored and executed right within the product.  This too is an area that is in its early stages and I expect will mature quickly to an enterprise level.

ODM originally comes from the ILOG company. This product has been around for 35 years. It is the most robust, mature rule engine on the market. It is very stable.

It is best on the market!

I personally don't use the technical support often. Our team has been working with ODM for a long time so we don't typically leverage IBM technical support.

As a consultant, I have seen customers using many different solutions.  There are only a few products out there on the market that actually allow business users to manage business rules.  Most of the other products that compete with ODM are too IT-centric.  By far, our most successful customers use ODM for managing business logic.

Customers switch to ODM for two primary reasons.  They want their business users to own the business rules and/or they need super-fast performance. 

The initial setup has gotten much easier. IBM now offers containers that you can spin up very quickly. They also offer ODM as a SaaS offering, so you can just subscribe to the service, then it's up and running.

I have been working in this automation project space for a long time. We have a client who had a three-month ROI on this tool, just in additional sales, from sort of "the next best action" of what product that they should offer to their clients. ROI can be very quick.

It reduces operating costs because you are taking some of this work out of the high cost IT people, freeing them up to work on new initiatives and getting them out of maintenance mode. Now, the business people are the ones making business decisions on what needs to change. They are hands on making these changes.

IBM has offered ODM on Cloud for over three years now.  They have a really attractive pricing model that allows our customers to get started very quickly without the need to worry about hardware provisioning and software installation.

Out-of-the-box, you get more capabilities with ODM than any other rule product out there.

ODM is a proven solution. There is a lot of talk about Decision Model and Notation (DMN), making sort of this DMN flow chart format for making complex decisions. I would caution you that DMNs is still very young. My decision to make recommendations to clients around ODM is based on knowing the solution will work for our customers. Some of these other newer products out there are very immature. I always look at scalability, maintainability and the capability to handle real complex decisions.  When looking at other solutions, I always ask myself:  "Do I trust this product to make my most critical business decisions?"

It is enterprise scale and provides amazing performance. 

In a process or case, there is decision logic. Without this tool, the business logic oftentimes gets coded into those tools, and now, it's no longer accessible to the business. While it compliments business process management and case management, managing business logic is separate and abstracted away from those processes. However, the tool is definitely used in conjunction with them.

Getting started with ODM can be a bit difficult without a little expertise. Most of our rules team have been working with it for a long time. In the end, it's well worth the investment to learn it, because it is the most capable solution. For nontechnical users, it's very easy to use. It is really the technical side of things to get it set up where the investment starts upfront and the usability ends up being the best experience in the end.

We use ODM for credit evaluation, online.

It helps keep our business areas independent, because they can make decisions without IT. It also reduces costs, because we can make the decisions online, in seconds.

What I'm really interested in, what I'd really like to see with this technology, is artificial intelligence, RPA. How can that interface with ODM?

It's 100 percent stable.

In terms of scalability, we have some 2,000 rules. In the next year, we expect to increase that amount by ten percent. It gives us that kind of scalability.

I have used IBM technical support in Peru. It has been really good.

The installation was easy. ODM enabled us to make decisions with a GUI. My business areas designed their rules, and it was very good.

We purchased the solution directly through IBM.

We looked at a lot of vendors, many open-source products.

We would recommend this solution.

We went with this solution from IBM because IBM has a roadmap and because Watson is the best software for artificial intelligence. We expect that our company's efficiency will increase, given the roadmap: ODM, RPA, Watson, etc. And the scalability was also an important factor for us.

To automate business decisions and allow businesses to make smarter decisions faster with a moden business friendly Web Application, the users adore.

The business owns the rules and they're taken away from IT, so business doesn't need to ask IT to implement them, and IT doesn't need to implement them. So the business owns their decisions and their rules, and therefore, finally, they take proper ownership, and model and maintain them properly.

In terms of compliance and reporting, that's tricky because we are not using it in such a hard way. It's more a help for business to automate their decision-making. They are improving that and they are much, much, faster than before. Instead of having quarterly, or yearly cycles and changes, they have them, now, pretty much daily.

It's very business friendly and rock solid.

We manage business rules within this product and the benefit is that businesses can manage these rules themselves.

One area for improvement is master data integration. That should be more fluid. The others are hierarchical drop-down lists, and hierarchical master data. We have a few hundred others that I have on the list.

Every software has small glitches, but generally it's a rock solid product. It's proven, and that's what it should do. 

We are pushing it quite crazily and, currently, from the scaling, we don't see an issue. So it scales.

They're really, really good. We only have the problem of getting them the data that they need because they're basically supporting us from a black box perspective. But besides that, they work day and night to get our problems solved. We're impressed.

Initially, it's straightforward, but you then need to tune it to your needs. Like your own car, you tune it if you have many kids, or if you have just a mistress. You configure the same car slightly differently, depending how you evolve. And same with platforms. So, it starts in vanilla and then you get creative.

When looking for a vendor I want to have the confidence that they are competent and they have a proper team behind it, that they have a big team. So I know that in 10 years, the product will still be around, and we will not have to rebuild our solutions every two years because they change everything.

I give it an eight out of 10 overall. Software never gets a 10. They can still add a lot of things. There's a very good base, vanilla setup, but all the other things that are customer-specific, you need to add.