BPM Product Analysis

BPM Product Analysis

A Comparison of Pegasystems PegaRULES Process

Commander and Oracle BPM Suite

August 2013

This white paper was sponsored by Oracle but was written by AVIO Consulting as an independent comparison between the BPM products offered by Pegasystems and Oracle.

Executive Summary

Because of the different capabilities and approaches the various software vendors have taken, Business Process Management (BPM) has become one of the most difficult software products to evaluate. Along with RFP checklists, BPM software selections are often made based on vendor demonstrations and, at best, hands-on proof of concepts conducted at a customer’s request. Because the requirements differ widely between the business and IT, the grading and weighting factors involved often make BPM product selections opaque, and companies are often left unsure that they have selected the best product for their needs.

Pegasystems and Oracle are two leading BPM vendors who have taken two completely different approaches. Because Pegasystems began as a business rules engine provider, their BPM software product has business rules as its base. Oracle BPM Suite was designed from the ground up to be a business driven, full lifecycle BPM product running on top of Oracle’s industry leading Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) platform.

Based on feedback from customers and industry consultants familiar with both products, the following factors combine to make Oracle BPM Suite the superior choice:

1. Ease of use – Oracle BPM is the easier of the two products to use in three essential areas. First, the processes are modeled by the business and enhanced by developers in an easy to understand common format that both understand. Second, both developers and the business analysts each have tools specifically built for their different skills and needs. The technical implementation components needed by developers in the tool they use is masked in the business users’ tool. Third, although both Pegasystems and Oracle BPM tools are simple for the business analysts to use, developers find Oracle BPM’s tools for developers much easier to use and much more robust.

2. Service and application integration – Although often overlooked during software evaluations, the integration to underlying services, databases and applications is an essential element on almost every BPM project. Oracle BPM’s tool for services and application integration is the best tool on the market today to accomplish this. 3. Monitoring and administration – Being able to view and manage the environment is

essential during the entire lifecycle of a project. Oracle BPM makes it easy for process stakeholders to manage and optimize the business processes.

4. Cost – Pegasystems’s PegaRULES product is significantly more expensive than Oracle BPM Suite. Oracle BPM comes with features that Pegasystems PegaRULES either does not possess or only includes at an additional charge. It typically costs organizations at least two times more to purchase the software license and implement a project using Pegasystems PegaRULES. Pegasystems’s needs for consulting services are also higher, and it costs seven times more to train a developer to use Pegasystems PegaRULES.

5. Enablement – Oracle BPM Suite is based on the widely used industry standards that both business and technical people are already familiar and comfortable with. Although both vendors provide training, anyone wanting to learn how to use Oracle BPM can download and install it from Oracle’s website at no charge.

Evaluation Methodology

Recognized as an expert in BPM, AVIO Consulting has been asked by many organizations to help evaluate and select BPM products through both product demonstrations, hands-on proof of concepts and past project implementation experience. The result of these experiences has been incorporated into this analysis.

The products were also evaluated based on detailed interviews that were conducted. The interviewees, primarily developers and administrators, were selected based on their hands-on experience with at least one of the BPM products, and in the case of some interviewees, both BPM products. Each was asked a series of detailed questions that covered each product’s business and technical approaches and the features of the product.

Overview of the Products

BPM products are changing rapidly to keep pace with the demands of the market. As a result, BPM is becoming more difficult to define and areas once outside of BPM are now fully

integrated in many products.

In its purest form, BPM is used today by companies to create seamless end-to-end business processes. Using BPM, companies can handle the difficult challenge of integrating existing systems, outside events, data, documents and human interactions. This means that people and systems can have discrete activities inside cohesive processes that support the organization’s business objectives, across different parts of the organization and its different applications. As work flows through the processes, people have tasks automatically assigned to them at the right time in the process with exactly the right contextual data they need to do their work. Similarly, as the processes need to integrate with various systems, their services are seamlessly integrated into BPM processes and invoked automatically at runtime.

Pegasystems is one of the remaining pure-play BPM product vendors still in the market today. Founded in 1983, it originated as a business rules engine provider. Their business rules

software has gradually transformed over the last 30 years into its PegaRULES Process

Commander (PRPC) product. As the name implies, every facet of the software takes a business rules based approach to BPM.

Oracle’s BPM product is the result of Oracle’s acquisition of BEA’s pure-play BPM product called AquaLogic BPM in 2008. In 2010, Oracle completed the integration of their process modeling, business rules, service orchestration, document management and analytic components into what now constitutes Oracle BPM Suite. The components are now tightly integrated from both a design time and a runtime perspective. Oracle BPM Suite is a core component in Oracle’s

Fusion Middleware stack – the platform used to develop Oracle’s Fusion Application portfolio of products.

Business Approach to BPM

Business analysts use Pegasystems’s Direct Capture of Objectives (DCO) tool to capture the project’s business requirements. This is a wizard based approach used to determine the high level requirements for the business processes, user interfaces, business rules, key performance indicators (KPI) and the reports that will be needed. Using this as input, a technical architect

can establish the framework of the new project’s high level process flows, business rules, payloads and user interfaces that will be required.

Once the high level requirements for a project have been captured using DCO, PRPC is used for the actual development of the project. PRPC is the single web based tool that both business analysts and extensively trained technical developers use to develop and run BPM applications.

The tools in Oracle BPM Suite, on the other hand, have been specifically designed to address the differing needs and skills of business analysts, developers, administrators, managers and end-users. Business people on Oracle BPM projects use the web-based Oracle Business Process Composer to create and document process models, run simulations, create business rules, design process payloads, create end user interface forms and interactively test the processes. Composer is simple to learn and business people are able to add value throughout the entire lifecycle of the BPM projects very quickly.

Technical Approach to BPM

In the case of Pegasystems, developers use the same web-based PRPC environment that the business analysts use. The web-based development environment is an issue for experienced developers more comfortable using an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) like Eclipse or JDeveloper to expose and invoke the services used by BPM processes.

Developers often have an issue with PRPC’s proprietary and zero code development interfaces. It can be both difficult to use and learn without extensive training and mentoring.

“From a developer’s perspective, PRPC is adequate but I feel limited to what I can do from a browser. Any heavy integration and mapping that needs to be performed is very painful.” – PRPC Developer, Financial Services Provider

Differences:

 Pegasystems PRPC is a single web-based tool for business users, business analysts and developers.

 Oracle BPM Suite has tools designed specifically for business analysts to use.

With Oracle BPM, the work done by the business analysts using the web-based Composer tool is

seamlessly shared with developers, who use the more technically oriented and standards based Oracle BPM Studio environment running on the JDeveloper IDE. Both developers and the business analysts access the same underlying Business Process Modeling and Notation (BPMN) 2.0 process artifacts through a common repository. Using Studio, however,

developers add the more technical BPMN 2.0 artifacts into processes developed by the business analysts (e.g., events), to easily integrate the services the process needs and to map and transform complex data from one format to another.

Feature Comparison

Process models created in a BPM tool graphically represent how the work will flow to the various people, systems and applications, once the project is put into production.

PRPC processes are modeled using a small subset of BPMN 2.0’s palette of tasks, gateways and events. It instead relies on the business rules that underlie every PRPC process to regulate how work items flow through the processes. As a result, the underlying business rules must be added at the same time a process is being modeled. The tight binding of the process and business rules obfuscate the processes, in many cases making them more difficult for the business to understand. Although in the most recent versions swimlane roles (BPMN lanes) can be added to PRPC processes, they are optional and rarely added. As a result, to business

people used to seeing BPMN processes, the processes in PRPC look instead like complex flow charts.

Both Oracle BPM Composer and Studio fully support BPMN 2.0 process pools, swimlane roles, activities, gateways and events. With Oracle BPM, the process itself determines the flow of work items and swimlanes are always used to model the default work assignments. Although some argue that BPMN 2.0 may be complex for the business to understand, the business oriented Composer tool handles this by only initially offering a simple palette of the most commonly used activities, gateways and events visible in its process modeling tool. If the business user wants to add more detailed activities, gateways or events, they can click the More button at the bottom of the drag and drop palette.

Differences:

 Developers using PRPC require extensive training and

mentoring to learn the proprietary environment.  The Oracle BPM Studio tool

used by developers is standards based, well documented and comparatively simple to use.

In contrast, common BPMN patterns normally modeled in BPM process are instead handled by PRPC business rules embedded with the process. As a result, some commonly used BPMN patterns are not supported such as:

 BPMN boundary and intermediate events are not modeled in a PRPC process.

 BPMN Parallel and Inclusive gateways used to model multiple people simultaneously working on a work item are not modeled in a PRPC process.

 BPMN Complex gateways that handle the commonly used voting patterns are not modeled in a PRPC process.

 Although the BPMN Sub-process activity exists in PRPC, Subprocess looping and multi-instance patterns (commonly used to separate a batch of items into separate individual work items) are not supported. Although PRPC works around these limitations to a varying degree using business rules, this functionality is difficult to recreate using PRPC business rules, and the process diagram itself does not accurately describe what the process will do once it is activated.

Oracle BPM on the other hand, fully supports all of the BPMN 2.0 patterns out of the box both at design time and at runtime. Additionally, because Oracle BPM supports boundary events, both interrupting and non-interrupting events are fully supported. Full BPMN support gives both business users and developers viewing the process models a clear mutual

understanding of what will occur at runtime. With Oracle BPM, what is modeled in a process reflects exactly how it will be executed (i.e. “what you see is what you execute”).

“PRPC’s process diagrams made it hard for my team to understand what was going to be delivered.” – PRPC Project Manager, Major Insurance Provider

Similar to PRPC, Oracle BPM can use business rules to assign tasks. In addition, Oracle BPM can assign tasks using any of these powerful yet intuitive out-of-the-box patterns:

Differences:

 Processes modeled in PRPC use business rules to determine the flow, which can be non-intuitive.  PRPC processes are modeled

using a proprietary and abstract notation that is difficult to understand.

 The BPMN 2.0 artifacts that cannot be modeled in PRPC processes are instead embedded in business rules under the processes.  Oracle BPM uses standard

BPMN 2.0 artifacts to model business processes that can be easily understood by business people.

 Assigning work in Oracle BPM is more powerful and based on commonly used patterns.  Oracle BPM Composer allows

snapshots to be taken at various points in a project’s lifecycle.

 User – simple pattern to assign work to a single user, a list of users or everyone in a role.

 FYI – inform a user that something has occurred but the work item continues on in the process.

 Management – a sequential series of approvals that automatically escalate up a user’s management chain.

 Group – based on the list of users specified, each user is sent the work item simultaneously.

 Complex – a combination of any of these patterns.

Although PRPC and Oracle BPM allow various stakeholders to have read only access to the projects, business analysts using Oracle BPM Composer can take snapshots of a project at different times in the project’s lifecycle to share a read-only view of the state of the processes in a project at a specific point in time. It facilitates mutual understanding and collaboration between business analysts and developers.

“Process modeling in Oracle BPM is just what I need. It was simple to learn and it lets me create implementable processes that my whole extended team can comprehend.” – Oracle BPM Business Analyst, IT Services Provider

Simulation

As processes are modeled, the focus is on the activities, sequence flows, gateways and defining who owns the work for the various activities in the process. While processes do a good job of showing the activities and how they are connected to one another, they do not provide the information regarding the variations that might occur when the process is actually executed in production. As a result, it is difficult to pinpoint exactly where bottlenecks and cost overruns will occur once it is deployed into production.

By creating and running simulations, business analysts are able to emulate what will happen very early in the project’s lifecycle and long before a process goes into production. Simulations find exactly where process related bottlenecks and budget overruns will occur. The focus can then be placed on optimizing those areas of the process.

Pegasystems’s ProcessRULES Process Simulator and PegaForcaster are products that can be added to PRPC at an additional charge, and are used by business analysts to run simulations on business processes and their associated rules. Based on the estimated work item arrival rate and the number of resources capable of performing the tasks is input, spreadsheet raw data must then be exported into Microsoft Excel where the individual rows of data can be viewed and analyzed. It is a cumbersome extra step.

Simulation is much more robust in Oracle BPM Suite in both the business oriented Composer tool as well as the developer oriented Oracle BPM Studio tool. Simulation features in Oracle BPM that do not exist in PRPC include:

 A simulation wizard can be run in Oracle BPM that speeds and simplifies the creation of a simulation. A business analyst inputs how many work items should be created during the simulation and how long (in simulation time) that the process should run. The estimated time and cost for each activity in the process is captured. The probability of the simulated instances taking one path versus another path is entered for each exclusive gateway in the process.

 Cost estimates for the process and each activity are automatically determined based on the number of users assigned to process swimlane roles, their hourly rate and their productivity.

 As the simulation is running, work item queue backlogs are displayed graphically on the process model itself. Resources can be dynamically changed to see how many people would be required to resolve an activity’s backlog while a simulation is still running.

 Simulation results do not have to be exported to Excel to be evaluated. As the simulation is running, 20 different cost, unit throughput and time metrics are automatically calculated and displayed graphically. Once the simulation has completed, the metrics are displayed inside the tool in the form of pie, line and bar charts.

 Actual runtime statistics from production can be used in simulations. After an Oracle BPM business process has been deployed and is running in

production, the process is monitored and a simulation configuration file representing production runtime statistics can be imported back into a simulation model. Using this tool, business analysts can see where bottlenecks are actually occurring and better judge what the impact of process changes to production will be.

Business Rules

Business rules are either embedded as an integral part of a BPM process or are invoked by the process where they are used to route and assign work items. The rules consist of business configurable if-then statements or decision tables that look like spreadsheets.

Differences:

 PRPC’s simulation is not

included with the base product.  PRPC’s simulation is very

rudimentary. A simulation’s raw data must be exported to Excel to be viewed and analyzed.  Simulation is robust and easy to

use in Oracle BPM. Once run, the simulation’s unit

throughput, time and cost metrics are displayed as charts in the same development environment.

 In Oracle BPM, a wizard simplifies and speeds the creation of initial simulation models.

 Once deployed, the live process performance metrics from the BPM engine can be imported back into an Oracle BPM simulation model to help identify runtime bottlenecks.

Because of Pegasystems’s origins as a business rules vendor – most artifacts created in PRPC have rules embedded. Although business people find the business rules tightly bound to the processes simple enough to create and maintain, developers are at time constrained by the business rules. For example, because different services are invoked as work items flow through a business process, it is common to map one type of data object into another object type. Where Oracle BPM uses a simple drag and drop declarative XSLT standards based diagram to map the attributes between the data types, PRPC instead takes a more cumbersome approach of using business rules to map the attributes between the differing data types.

Because of its extensive use of business rules throughout the product, PRPC is a fit for enterprises that are already comfortable with PRPC business rules and for processes that are heavily business rules based. Oracle BPM Suite includes Oracle Business Rules. Both business analysts using Composer and developers using Oracle BPM Studio can create and edit business rules. Unlike PRPC, business processes created in Oracle BPM are not tightly bound to business rules. This separation is intentional and allows the business rules to be defined separately and in parallel from process

modeling because the two are typically done by people with differing skill sets. Because the rules are separate from the processes, the business becomes more agile and adaptable to change. Business people can change Oracle business rules as often as the business needs them to change. The changes take effect immediately without redeploying the associated processes each time. An Oracle business rule can be added to the processes simply by adding BPMN business rule activity into the flow of the process. As a work item travels through the process’s business rule activity, the associated business rule is invoked and the results are returned back to the process automatically.

Oracle BPM business rules have a business-friendly syntax and can be defined in either if-then or spreadsheet styles. If created using the spreadsheet style, error checking automatically detects both overlaps and gaps in the rules.

Differences:

 PRPC project artifacts are tightly bound to business rules

throughout the product even where a simple declarative diagram would be more productive and easier to maintain.

 Agility is improved because Oracle BPM process models and business rules are loosely coupled which simplifies development, provides a division of labor, and makes it easy to change a rule without having to redeploy its associated process.

User Interface Form Creation

The user interfaces created inside BPM tools are how the information about a work item is displayed to the end-users at runtime. The user interfaces can display dynamically rendered graphical charts, graphs and maps to help represent the data.

End user interfaces are created in PRPC using a drag and drop interface. But just like the PRPC business processes, the user interfaces are rule-based. As forms are created, their embedded business rules must also be added.

Oracle BPM takes a more commonly used approach to developing end user interfaces. Oracle BPM’s user interface development tools use a declarative diagram drag and drop / property driven approach.

Non-technical business people use Oracle BPM’s Web Form Designer tool to create user interface forms quickly with very little training. A developer’s

assistance might be required to hide / show or disable / enable fields and to populate dropdowns because these rules are created in the tool using JavaScript. Without having to deploy the project, a business person using Oracle BPM’s Process Player in Composer can interactively test the forms associated with each user activity in the process while still having the process model displayed. As a work item travels through the process during testing, each user interface created in the Web Form Design tool is displayed with data and executed as a test work item instance flows through each User activity in the process.

Developers use Oracle BPM Studio’s Application Development Framework (ADF) tool to create the complex end-user forms that require sophisticated controls and functionality. ADF is a best-in-class tool used by thousands of developers both inside Oracle BPM and also outside to develop forms in portals, standalone web applications and in Oracle’s own Fusion Application packages. It is a complete Model View Controller (MVC) JavaServer Faces (JSF) standards based environment. Because it is MVC based, it is transparent where the information displayed on the ADF forms comes from and the information can include an aggregation of the data coming from the process’s payload, web services, databases, Java classes and EJBs. Although ADF is a very powerful tool, there is a steeper learning curve associated with it. Having the assistance of someone who has used ADF on a previous project will help developers get started.

Differences:

 PRPC form development is based on Pegasystems’s proprietary rules technology.  With Oracle BPM, both

non-technical business people and developers can create the user forms using tools specifically designed for them.

 Oracle BPM’s ADF used by developers is standards based, richer in functionality and has a larger set of AJAX based

components than those included with PRPC.

 Oracle BPM’s Web Form Designer is simpler to use than PRPC’s form designer.

Data Modeling

Data modeling tools define how information will be stored in a relational database. A diagram is used to define the tables, how the information is stored in each table, and lines are drawn between the tables to reflect how the tables relate to one another. For example, a data model diagram shows that an order can have many order lines by showing an ORDER table and an ORDER_LINE table and a line between the two indicating that orders have zero, one or more order lines. Data modeling is often needed on a BPM project to model how the data is to be stored. This becomes especially important if information needs to be persisted beyond the life of a work item in a process.

PRPC does not include a tool for relational database modeling, and if this is a requirement, a third party tool must be purchased separately.

Having its origins as one of the original relational database vendors gives Oracle a distinct advantage in this area. Oracle BPM Studio includes the same tools that developers have used for years to create and maintain relational data models.

Logical data models are created declaratively in a diagram that shows the tables, their foreign keys and primary keys. The physical tables are then easily created from the logical data model either through Oracle BPM Studio directly or by the SQL it generates.

Integration

Integration refers to a BPM tool’s ability to automatically connect to and invoke backend systems and databases as work items flow through the processes. One of the key benefits of a BPM product is its ability to integrate to backend systems inside the tool without developers having to resort to hand coding the interfaces.

PRPC provides a declarative environment wizard based approach to integrate to the backend services, databases and applications. The wizards provided are intended to guide developers through the creation of connectors to the backend systems using native technologies, web services, Enterprise Java Beans (EJB), .Net, JDBC, Java Message System (JMS) and IBM WebSphere MQ. Although PRPC’s integration to web services is relatively simple, the integration wizards to other technologies are difficult to use and are poorly documented. Developers find PRPC’s browser-based interface both cumbersome and limiting. As a result, most developers elect instead to hand code in Java.

Difference:

 PRPC requires the purchase of a third party tool to model data.  Oracle BPM includes a

best-in-class data modeling tool.

Pegasystems has experienced consultants who should be used to help customers with

integration. Customers considering PRPC should bring in Pegasystems consultants to help with integration on their first project if it involves more complex application or data integration requirements. A key benefit of Oracle BPM Suite is that it is layered on top of Oracle's SOA platform and its complete set of best-in-class adapters and tools. Oracle’s SOA

platform is a proven, standards based approach to exposing and integrating databases and backend services using standard Java EE Connector Architecture (JCA) adapters. Some of the adapters included are: B2B, Business Activity Monitoring (BAM), database, EJB, File, FTP, HTTP, JMS, MQ and web service adapters.

Beyond the vendor’s training, learning how to

integrate to services using Oracle BPM can be learned easily through the documentation inside the tool, through commercially available books or on Oracle Technical Network (OTN). Developers can get hands-on practical experience using Oracle BPM by simply downloading the software openly available from Oracle’s website.

Oracle BPM Suite is the best choice to integrate and supplement Oracle Fusion application packaged solutions. Oracle Fusion applications are easily made process-aware and integrated with Oracle BPM through:

 Pre-built integration – Fusion Applications come with pre-built Oracle BPM processes and the reusable services required for integration.

 Built using Oracle BPM – Both Oracle Fusion Customer Relationship Management (CRM) and Oracle Fusion Human Capital Management (HCM) Fusion applications were created using BPMN processes. This means that both can be modified and extended

natively using Oracle BPM.

Differences:

 Because of the product’s proprietary nature, PRPC developers require much more training and mentoring.

 Integration to backend services, databases and applications is cumbersome in PRPC,

frequently requiring hand coding in Java and Pegasystems consultants to assist on

projects.

 For training purposes,

developers can get hands-on experience using Oracle BPM by simply downloading and installing the openly available software from Oracle.

 Oracle BPM leverages Oracle SOA, a best-in-class integration platform.

 Oracle BPM’s Composite diagram visually represents the integration between the

components.

 Oracle BPM Suite includes Oracle BPEL, a best-in-class service orchestration tool.  Oracle BPM uses a simple drag

and drop, standards based diagram to easily transform data between services.

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© AVIO Consulting, LLC 2013 Each Oracle BPM project has a standards-based Service Component Architecture (SCA)

composite diagram associated with it that is used to not only define the components, but also to depict how the components are assembled and connected to one another declaratively by simply dragging the wires between components on the diagram.

Although PRPC processes can invoke exposed services, PRPC does not include the robust service-to-service orchestration tools BPM projects sometimes require. Where PRPC’s integration is point-to-point (process to a service), Oracle BPM Suite includes Oracle BPEL Process Manager’s best-in-class service orchestration tool. Oracle BPEL is a standards based approach to model services, manage transactions, and handle compensations when exceptions occur. When complex service orchestration is required, an Oracle BPEL process is invoked natively from an Oracle BPM process’s Service activity.

As the underlying services are exposed and connected, the data going into and back out from the service often needs to be transformed from one data schema’s format into another. In PRPC, the transformation is done using its proprietary business rules. Oracle BPM on the other hand includes a best-in-class declarative drag-and-drop mapping tool and stores the mapping in XSLT standard syntax. Using the tool, both simple and complex logic driven mappings are available as the data is transformed.

“PRPC is very complicated. We often found ourselves hand coding Java to keep from having to use it for integration.” – PRPC Developer, Technology Services Provider

II. Execution Capabilities Business User Experience

Although business users select, execute, re-assign, delegate and escalate tasks similarly in both products, the collaboration between business users and

developers is handled differently.

In PRPC, business users access their applications using the same web-based environment that the developers use. An advantage of this is that it allows direct collaboration and feedback between the IT developers and the business people. For example, as an end-user selects an existing item to work on, they can

immediately rate the effectiveness of user interface pages and add a sticky note with suggested

improvements that the developer can see. As well as having the ability to list and perform their assigned

Differences:

 Business users on PRPC can provide feedback to developers while on a form at runtime.  In Oracle BPM Suite, business

users can be actively involved in the project’s development. Using Oracle BPM Suite’s WebCenter portal, the business analysts can create, view and modify business processes, business rules and user interfaces.

tasks, PRPC business users are able to interactively collaborate with one another using chat. Oracle WebCenter is a full featured Web 2.0 portal and collaboration environment, and Oracle BPM Suite includes WebCenter’s Process Spaces. Process Spaces is role-based, and business users only see and perform the tasks assigned to them or to their assigned groups based on the process model’s design. Based on the business user’s permissions, they can also view, create or modify process models, business rules and user interfaces using Composer’s web user interface. Business users select and work on process instances from a task list and collaborate with one another using WebCenter’s chat and wiki. For customers without a portal implementation, the task list can also be exposed using a web-based Workspace tool or through Oracle BPM’s API. Content Management

Content management is software that is either bundled with BPM tools or purchased

separately. Its purpose is to manage, version and view files that business users upload, based on the user’s role and permissions. When used with BPM, content management transparently associates files with specific work items flowing through processes. Content management’s ability to seamlessly upload and version the files associated with work items is a key element of most BPM projects.

PRPC does not include content management software and it must be purchased separately. PRPC can integrate to content management software packages that use Content Management Interoperability Services (CMIS) protocol.

Oracle WebCenter Content is packaged with Oracle BPM Suite and has out-of-the-box integration with the product. If a customer has an existing content

management software solution, it can be integrated with Oracle BPM using the content management software’s API.

Case Management

Case Management is a feature recently added by most BPM vendors into their products. Using Case Management, knowledge workers are able to create, manage, maintain and share a case. The case is a collection of tasks, information, documents and decisions that are made during its lifespan. Instead of a work item flowing through a pre-determined or deterministic process, a case in both PRPC’s Dynamic Case Management (DCM) and Oracle BPM’s Adaptive Case Management (ACM) can be created to dynamically invoke several different processes, which are managed by a business rule. Individual case workers can invoke sub-cases along the way.

Differences:

 PRPC does not include content management software. Third party software must be

purchased separately and then integrated into the end-user’s environment.

 Oracle BPM Suite includes content management within the product.

Although included in several BPM tools, Case Management’s practical use will remain

dependent on the level of BPM maturity inside an organization and it will remain limited until there is a more widespread need for ad-hoc and custom case solutions.

PRPC and Oracle BPM’s Case Management functionality is similar and both include Case Management as an integral part of the product provided at no additional charge.

Cases are created similarly in both PRPC (using PRPC’s Case Designer) and Oracle BPM (using Oracle BPM Studio). Developers in both tools define the different processes, tasks, milestones and the underlying business rules that form the case.

Instead of viewing the individual granular pieces of a case, end-users need an overall view of the cases at runtime. Cases are managed and viewed similarly in both PRPC (using the Case Manager Portal add-on) and Oracle BPM (using the Case Space tool inside of Process Spaces). III. Analysis and Monitoring

Process Monitoring

For business executives and managers, one of the most significant problems with enterprise software has been the scarcity of meaningful reports that represent the flood of underlying data. Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) abstracts the raw data and presents meaningful views of easily understood graphical charts designed in the BAM product. Authorized end-users

can view graphical reports that display the current status or past status of KPIs and service level

agreements (SLA). Monitoring can be made active by setting thresholds and then used to automatically send notifications to workers when a threshold is about to be reached (e.g. automatically notify a manager and escalate a work item’s priority when its SLA is about to expire).

PRPC’s BAM gathers process performance and KPI metrics as work items flow through the processes. Pre-built BAM reports can display the aggregated data inside of PRPC and additional reports can be

constructed by developers.

Although both PRPC and Oracle BPM’s process monitoring tools can automatically trigger events to respond to KPI performance thresholds being met, Oracle BPM Suite’s process monitoring has richer functionality and includes two different types of process monitoring capabilities.

Differences:

 PRPC’s BAM only monitors and displays PRPC’s metrics.

 Oracle BPM’s BAM can monitor events from both inside and outside of Oracle BPM.

 Oracle BPM’s Process Analytics dashboards can be constructed by business users.

First, Oracle BPM’s Process Analytics is used by authorized business people to create their own dashboards using the Workspace and Process Spaces tools. The data displayed in the charts is aggregated from a star schema database that stores the historical information about work items as they flow through processes or portions of processes automatically. The performance and KPI information displayed is based on process, activity, people performance times and the business indicator KPIs built into the process.

Second, Oracle BPM Suite also includes Oracle BAM. Like PRPC’s BAM, it can invoke process related events when a threshold is reached (e.g., to start or interrupt or escalate a work item), but Oracle BAM is not limited to displaying process KPIs from within the BPM Workspace and can also be used by other applications. It can display not only the process information but also event feeds from outside of Oracle BPM to create a complete picture of the status of the business. Another difference is that Oracle BAM charts are loosely coupled with Oracle BPM. This means that Oracle BAM charts can be displayed from within Oracle BPM Spaces and Workspace as well as from Oracle BAM’s standalone web application or other applications. Process Intelligence

While BAM tools display pie and bar charts that are populated as instances flow through processes, some BPM tools also use process intelligence that provides sophisticated real time analytics to improve the decisions that are being made. Based on the metrics input, processes are capable of continuing to improve their decisions or suggestions to end-users over time. Sometimes referred to as intelligent business operations, this enables:

 Real time awareness of the actions that should be taken. Cases previously sent to business users to analyze or approve can instead be handled without human intervention.

 Visibility of events occurring throughout the enterprise and the changes needed.

 Faster and better decisions to help drive revenue, decrease cost and improve customer satisfaction.

 Improved compliance and fraud detection.

PRPC’s Next-Best-Action Advisor (N-B-A) is available at an additional charge and is used to help knowledge workers make better decisions based on its recommendations. When combined with Pegasystems frameworks, it can be used to improve customer retention, customer loyalty and cross-selling opportunities.

Similarly, Oracle has a product called Oracle Real-time Decisions (RTD) used to automatically make decisions and provide recommendations.

Both PRPC’s N-B-A and Oracle’s RTD can provide additional value to the entire enterprise because they are both loosely coupled with their BPM products. As a result, they can be used

outside of a BPM work item or process context. The metrics input can come from either inside or outside of BPM processes, and they can expose their decisions to both BPM processes as well as enterprise’s other applications and web forms.

If extensive analytics are required for a project, Oracle Business Analytics tools can be easily integrated with Oracle BPM. It is additional cost but offers extensive process analytics and reporting that is beyond what PRPC N-B-A can provide.

IV. Technical Components and Capabilities Runtime Architecture and Tools

PRPC runs on WebLogic, WebSphere and JBoss applications servers and Tomcat web server. PRPC projects and rules are deployed as JAR files.

Oracle BPM runs on both WebLogic and WebSphere application servers. Unlike PRPC, Oracle BPM projects are deployed as the industry standard SOA composite EAR files that

administrators are used to deploying.

Pegasystems recommends that their consulting services be used on projects to help identify and resolve bottlenecks, add indexes, to increase memory and to set the database cache and pool threads appropriately.

Oracle BPM projects on the other hand are already optimized to run on their targeted application servers without the need for extensive performance tuning services by the vendor.

PRPC’s System Management Application (SMA) is an add-on product that can be purchased at an additional charge to help monitor memory utilization and the Java Virtual Machines (JVM). This is an important tool because as PRPC rules are executed, bottlenecks can occur as a chain of business rules related to it may also be executed. Depending on the length of the chain, performance issues may result.

Oracle Enterprise Manager, an enterprise management solution, is much more comprehensive and robust than PRPC’s SMA in these important areas:

 Using Enterprise Manager, developers easily see how a work item traveled through its entire path – not only through the Oracle BPM components but also through every SOA

Differences:

 Pegasystems consulting

services is sometimes required to improve the engine’s

performance.

 The PRPC SMA add-on has only a very small subset of Oracle Enterprise Manager’s

functionality.

 Oracle BPM projects run on application servers without the need for performance

optimization.

service, human task, business rule and process invoked throughout the work item’s lifecycle. Developers are able to see the payload into and out of every step in the work item’s lifespan.

 On BPM projects, end-to-end administration and management is essential. Enterprise Manager is included with Oracle BPM Suite.

 Enterprise Manager continuously monitors the health of the entire domain and its composites. Performancestatistics are viewed and tuned for both BPM composites as well as the services and transactions invoked outside of Oracle BPM. Individual

composite projects can be started, shutdown, restarted, deployed or removed as needed.

“Having used both PRPC and Oracle BPM, as a developer on PRPC projects I often found myself missing Oracle BPM’s ability to track an item throughout its entire lifecycle including every process, sub-process, task and service.” – PRPC Administrator, IT Provider

Frameworks / Process Accelerators

BPM vendors create pre-built industry specific or horizontal solutions using their products that give customers a jump start on projects. Pegasystems calls these Frameworks and Oracle calls them Process Accelerators. They are built using the BPM tool and can be deployed as is or customized to meet the specific needs of a customer. Vendors provide both industry specific solutions (e.g., financial industry client on-boarding application) and horizontal solutions (e.g., a cross industry Customer Relationship Management application). They normally include BPM process models, business rules, end-user interfaces, database schemas, key performance indicators (KPI), dashboards and work item payload definitions.

Pegasystems has led both the vertical and horizontal BPM solution offerings. An industry specific

foundation data model is provided and then on top of that the customizable PRPC built solution is stacked. Because of the long learning curve and the difficulty developers have using the product, these pre-built add-on solution frameworks are a key element in

Differences:

 The Pegasystems Frameworks are robust and cover a variety of vertical industries.

 Pegasystems charges a premium price for its Frameworks.

 Beyond the purchase price, also factor in the cost of

experienced Pegasystems consultants needed to extend a Framework solution.

 Because of Oracle BPM’s relative ease of use, Oracle BPM Process Accelerators are much easier to extend.  Oracle BPM Process

Accelerators are provided at no cost to customers.

Pegasystems’s success. Once purchased, they are then tailored to fit the customer’s specific needs.

Pegasystems has hired respected industry experts to help create and market their frameworks. The vertical Frameworks include applications for Financial Services, Communications,

Healthcare, Insurance, Manufacturing and Public Sector. Pegasystems horizontal frameworks include Case Management, CRM and Project Management.

Pegasystems frameworks are premium priced. They are extended with the help of Pegasystems consulting services or their partners. When considering using one of the Pegasystems

frameworks, beyond the price of the BPM tool and the framework, one should also factor in the cost of the experienced Pegasystems consultants who will be needed to help customize the solution.

Oracle’s pre-built Process Accelerators became available in 2012. They are built, extended and deployed using Oracle BPM. Each includes the processes, business rules, payload schemas, database schema definitions, user interfaces and dashboards needed.

Oracle BPM vertical process accelerators include: Public Sector Incident Reporting, Financial Service Loan Origination and Business Account Opening. Oracle BPM horizontal process accelerators include Travel Request Management, Document Routing and Approval, Internal Service Request and Employee On-boarding. They are provided to customers at no charge and can be used as a portion of the solution or simply as a training aid to illustrate best practices on an Oracle BPM project.

Cost Considerations

The cost factors that should be considered when evaluating BPM include software licensing, maintenance and support, implementation, hardware, training and operational support. The cost of the pre-built BPM solutions provided by the vendors (PRPC Frameworks or Oracle BPM Process Accelerators), and the cost of additional software licenses must also be factored in (e.g., database, application server and content management).

PRPC is significantly more expensive than Oracle BPM Suite. Oracle BPM comes with features that PRC either does not possess or only includes at an additional charge. It typically costs organizations at least two times more to purchase the software license and implement a project using PRPC, which often requires more professional services to implement integration. It also costs extra to purchase additional software such as content management, and seven times more to train a developer to use PRPC.

Acquisition

Comparing the acquisition costs of PRPC and Oracle BPM is not a one-to-one comparison given their different licensing models. Pegasystems licenses PRPC on a usage basis with a license fee for each named user, rule execution and connection to an external system. Oracle typically licenses on a per CPU basis but also provides an option to purchase on a per user basis.

Two sample scenarios are shown below to help provide context and a comparison between the two products. It is important to understand that both vendors require an application server and relational database. PRPC runs on WebLogic, WebSphere and JBoss applications servers and Tomcat web server. Oracle BPM is certified to run on both WebLogic and WebSphere. In addition, Oracle BPM requires an Oracle SOA Suite license as well.

Scenario A: Small-Medium Process – Oracle BPM $70,000, Pegasystems over $150,000 (USD).

Regular Named Users: 25

Process Steps/Activities: 25

Process Instances Per Month: 1,050

Rule Invocations Per Month: 100,000

Connectors/Integrations: 4

 Oracle – This scenario would lend itself to a named user license for Oracle BPM. The perpetual use license cost would be approximately $70,000 per environment installed. Oracle also offers customers an entry level restricted-use license alterative called Oracle BPM Standard Edition. It is priced on a named user model and gives customers an

economical alternative to prove out BPM with a minimal license investment. Pegasystems does not offer this alternative.

 Pegasystems –The license cost for the connectors alone almost equals Oracle BPM’s price. The additional cost for users and rules invocations raises the price well above $150,000 for each environment installed. Pegasystems’s license costs are higher primarily because there is a charge each time a PRPC rule is executed. The number of rules can quickly grow because of the ubiquitous nature of the rules integrated in the processes, user interfaces and data transformations required to execute a process.

Scenario B: Large Process – Oracle BPM less than $300,000, Pegasystems over $1 million (USD).

Regular Named Users: 250

Process Steps/Activities: 100

Process Instances Per Month: 100,000

Rules Invocations Per Month: 5,000,000

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© AVIO Consulting, LLC 2013

 Oracle – This scenario would lend itself to a CPU based license for Oracle BPM. The perpetual use license cost would be under $300,000 for a quad-core CPU capable of handling the users and transactions.

 Pegasystems – The license cost for the named users alone exceeds the Oracle BPM license. The added cost for users and rules invocations raises the price well above $1 million.

Oracle BPM Pegasystems PRPC

Software license CPU or User based User, usage, connector, and

invocation based.

Add-ons Process Accelerators, SOA Suite

and WebCenter Portal/Content Management is included

Frameworks, integrations, content management software

Requisite Software Application Server, Database Application Server, Database

Entry Level License Oracle BPM SE None

Small License Deal < $250,000 < $550,000

Maintenance and Support

Pegasystems charges 20% of the original license fee annually for Support and Maintenance, while Oracle charges 22% of the net license annually. Given the higher cost of the license for Pegasystems in the examples above, the Maintenance and Support fees are correspondingly higher as well.

Implementation

The most difficult comparison in this analysis is the cost of an implementation. The variation in skill levels, availability of skilled resources, project requirements and each client’s existing hardware and software environment make implementation comparisons difficult. In both

products, implementations can be achieved from installation to production within ninety days. For the purposes of a comparison, assume that Scenario A above is used and assume that the project is estimated to take between four to six months from process discovery to production release. Assume also that the resources required on the project include two experienced developers, two inexperienced

developers, relevant subject matter experts and technical experts. Because PRPC has a longer learning curve, the inexperienced developers will be less productive on the project. Developers using Oracle BPM are normally proficient at the end of their first

Differences:

 Pegasystems licenses on a usage basis versus Oracle’s CPU based model.

 Pegasystems license and implementation costs are significantly more expensive  It costs 7 times more to be

trained in PRPC than in Oracle BPM.

project while PRPC developers are not yet fully productive even on their second project. As a result, PRPC projects typically take longer time and cost more to deliver.

Training

Training is an essential element for success with any software product and BPM products are no exception. Both Oracle and Pegasystems offer role-based training that allows business and technical resources to gain the knowledge needed to use their respective products. Below are the BPM courses listed by each vendor.

Pegasystems Technical Training

Course Investment

PRPC: Fast Track – Foundation course 5 days

PRPC: Boot camp - Follow-on to the Fast Track course 5 days

PRPC: Senior System Architect – Deep Dive 15 days

PRPC: Lead System Architect – Follow-on 20 days

Pegasystems Business-Focused Training

Course Investment

PRPC: Business Architect Essentials – Foundation course 5 days PRPC: DCO & Methodology Workshop – DCO tool training 5 days Oracle BPM Technical Training

Course Investment

Oracle BPM: Implement the Process Model 4 days

Oracle BPM Business-Focused Training

Course Investment

Oracle BPM: Modeling – 3 day model, simulations, BAM dashboard training

3 days Oracle BPM: Essentials – half-day self-study – quick overview of

Oracle BPM modeling, simulation, Workspace and BAM

.5 days

As illustrated here, Pegasystems recommends significantly more training than Oracle does. An investment in training for a technical person to use PRPC can be as much as $18,000 compared to only $2,400 for Oracle. Also take into account the opportunity cost of the 41 days of lost productivity in the office.

Other Costs

In addition to the major factors indicated above, other factors should also be considered when comparing the total cost of Oracle BPM and PRPC. One key factor is that Oracle BPM is bundled and integrated with a best-of-breed content management system that can be used to store, secure, and associate documents with the individual process work item tasks. If PRPC is

purchased, a separate content management system from a third party would also need to be licensed if content management is required on the project.

“It was very difficult for us to find trained and qualified PRPC resources for my project. Because it took us so long to train our own developers, we found

ourselves having to bring in the vendor’s consultants at a much higher cost.” – PRPC Project Manager, IT Consulting Services Provider

The pre-built solutions provided in Oracle BPM’s Process Accelerators and PRPC’s Frameworks can greatly speed development time. Although there are more PRPC Frameworks, their license fee is quite high. Oracle currently offers its Process Accelerators free of charge.

Summary

Even though the different BPM products continue to evolve rapidly, the market is gradually becoming more mature, and many of the products appear on the surface to have similar functionality. However, a BPM product that is a perfect fit for one company might easily be a very poor fit for another. Before beginning an evaluation, one should always ensure that both the business and technical teams involved have evaluated their needs and have determined the critical areas of functionality they require.

Pegasystems’s PegaRULES Process Commander (PRPC) and Oracle’s BPM Suite are a microcosm of the overall BPM market today. The two products have key fundamental and philosophical differences in the way they approach BPM from both business and technical perspectives.

 Cost – The Pegasystems PRPC and its Frameworks have a much higher price point than Oracle BPM Suite and its Process Accelerators. Oracle BPM comes with features that PRPC either does not include or only includes at an additional charge. It typically costs organizations at least two times more to purchase the software license and implement a project using Pegasystems PegaRULES. It costs seven times more to train someone how to develop BPM projects using Pegasystems and its idiosyncratic rules.

 Ease of use – Although PRPC is simple for the business analysts to use, it is a difficult tool for developers to use. Oracle BPM Suite is friendly to both business analysts and developers. Oracle BPM has robust, standards based and easy to use tools that target the different needs of business analysts and developers. The processes built in Oracle BPM are based on the BPMN 2.0 standard, which is much easier for the business and developers to understand.

 Service Integration and Orchestration – Integration to underlying services is much easier to accomplish using Oracle BPM. Rather than point-to-point connection to services, Oracle BPM’s BPEL provides best-in-class service orchestration. Oracle BPM is the product to purchase if backend application and service integration is required on BPM projects.

 Monitoring and Administration – Administrators find it easier to manage the overall environment, and developers find it easier to debug process issues using Oracle BPM.

 Enablement – Although both vendors provide training, both developers and business people also can learn how to use Oracle BPM by downloading it from Oracle’s

AVIO Consulting partners with customers to optimize their investments in middleware technologies, process improvement initiatives and business strategy / IT capability alignment efforts. AVIO offers full lifecycle consulting services from infrastructure to implementation, instructor-led and virtual training and mentoring for BPM and SOA enterprise initiatives.