Research and Markets: SaaS BPM: Silencing the Skeptics - Examine the Latest Developments in the Field of BPM and the Latest Market Offerings

DUBLIN--(Business Wire)--
Research and Markets
(http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/63238b/saas_bpm_silencin) has
announced the addition of the "SaaS BPM: Silencing the Skeptics (Strategic
Focus)" report to their offering.

The inherent success of the SaaS model and BPM has forced many vendors to
rethink the applicability of SaaS to BPM. Datamonitor believes that this is the
right time for BPM to take its SaaS strategy mainstream. This report explores
the latest developments in the field of BPM and looks at market offerings
critically.

Scope

* Gauges the readiness of BPM to the SaaS model
* Delivers a comprehensive assessment of SaaS BPM offerings
* Presents Datamonitor's detailed view on the value that vendors and their
customers can derive from SaaS BPM

Highlights of this title

* While demand in the on-premises BPM market continues unabated, SaaS BPM is
slowly finding acceptance in certain pockets of the BPM market. Datamonitor
believes that lower entry costs, broader reach and faster time to deployment
could endear SaaS BPM offerings to customers that are comfortable with cloud
computing application delivery model.
* Many business processes are executed with resources outside an organization,
such as BPO, SaaS customer relationship management (CRM), supply chain
management (SCM) and cloud infrastructure. As the number of external influences
in a process grow, it will become imperative for BPM to be able to customize the
external services it consumes.
* The effect of SaaS BPM offerings on the BPM market will be complementary
rather than cannibalistic. SaaS model will boost the proliferation of BPM and
help BPM reach a larger user base. However, not all categories of vendors will
seize these opportunities.

Key reasons to purchase this title

* Gain in-depth knowledge on the emerging SaaS BPM landscape
* Rethink your SaaS strategy and discover sweet spots for SaaS BPM
* Re-evaluate go-to-market strategies for SaaS BPM against current market
challenges

Key Messages

* The market for SaaS BPM is still nascent but is picking up momentum
* The argument for SaaS BPM will become more compelling as processes move
off-premise
* Some parts of the BPM stack are naturally suited to the SaaS model
* Most vendors are still divided on whether to offer complete execution in the
SaaS model
* Competition is sparse given market immaturity-existing vendors could reap
benefits now
* Prudent go-to-market strategies should target maximum payoff areas of SaaS BPM
first

Market Impact

* The key to BPM's success in the recession is in its ability to facilitate
change
* The ongoing recession has caused rapid changes in business
* Business changes warrant a transformation in processes
* Process changes have been driven by external factors and industry events
* Processes are no longer confined to companies' firewalls alone
* Growth in outsourcing will bring about a need for process visibility and
flexibility
* The success of cloud computing ensures that more applications move to the
cloud
* BPM will have to evolve with current business changes
* SaaS BPM to experience growth over the longer term
* Vendor and end-user data, though sparse, point to growing interest
* A SaaS BPM maturity model
* The path to SaaS BPM contains opportunities and challenges

Technology Evolution

* A BPM suite can be deconstructed into five core and two secondary layers
* Process modeling and design is best suited to SaaS
* Collaboration is easier in the cloud
* Many vendors provide modeling capabilities in the cloud
* Business rules could be the next to move to the cloud
* Process discovery and project scoping are challenging in the SaaS model
* All other parts of the BPM stack require execution in the cloud environment
* Process analytics: integration with on-demand BI dashboards
* Mashups and composites can be governed with SaaS BPM
* SaaS BPM technology is just picking up momentum

Customer Impact

* SaaS BPM will add new impetus to the business IT alignment exercise
* BPM in the SaaS model could bring back the modularity in the BPM stack
* SaaS BPM could enable business users to build and modify processes with
minimal IT intervention
* SaaS BPM will improve budgeting accuracy and direct budgets to business cases
* Infrastructure investments will be closely scrutinized in the recession
* SaaS BPM will further the case for IaaS and help tie new investments to
business action
* Impact: SaaS BPM to monitor its own infrastructure usage
* SaaS BPM will help capture tacit knowledge from process participants
* Capturing tacit knowledge could be critical while mapping processes
* Social, collaborative user environments can remove perception barriers to
knowledge capture
* SaaS-based modeling solutions are ideal for engaging a larger number of
participants
* Hybrid implementations could transform the BPM deployment lifecycle
* Manual discovery, modeling, and testing could overlap during deployment
* Manual discovery can be executed better in SaaS deployments
* Modeling will be a natural extension to manual process discovery
* SaaS could align model development and testing to agile practices
* Execution, monitoring and optimization in the cloud may not significantly
affect deployment
* SaaS BPM will make the modeling process inclusive

Competitive Landscape

* Possessing a SaaS strategy could be the next frontier for differentiation
* SaaS BPM applications will broaden the scope of the market
* Vendor diversity and specialization will decide the SaaS strategy
* Traditional BPM specialists will be at forefront of the SaaS wave
* Some BPM specialists now offer components of their BPM suite in the SaaS
version
* Some of these specialists have managed to tap into the underpenetrated SMB
segment
* A distinct category of BPM platform specialists may emerge
* Generalist PaaS providers could jump in with process-based applications
* Middleware and application conglomerates may be the last to adopt SaaS
* Competition will be low at the leading end of SaaS BPM over the medium term

Go to Market

* Distinguish between delivery options and go to market strategies
* What to sell: capture the low hanging fruits first
* Manual discovery is easiest to sell and has clear, demonstrated benefits for
customers
* Business rules, simple workflows, other BPM capabilities linked to ECM could
be next
* ECM-linked BPM could take off
* Testing and simulation can be offered through PaaS eventually
* How to sell: partner extensively to expand reach
* Who to sell to: target the users for which enterprise IT cannot cater
* Develop go-to-market approaches based on your intended SaaS strategy
* Bottom-up approach: tools vendors
* Top-down approach: customized applications vendors

For more information visit
http://www.researchandmarkets.com/research/63238b/saas_bpm_silencin

Source: Datamonitor

Research and Markets
Laura Wood, Senior Manager,
press@researchandmarkets.com
U.S. Fax: 646-607-1907
Fax (outside U.S.): +353-1-481-1716

Copyright Business Wire 2009