webMethods Tops Forrester Wave ReportwebMethods Tops Forrester Wave Report

webMethods, which at the beginning of 2006 couldn't even break into the BPM analysts' magic circle/wave/whatever, ended the year taking top honors in the Forrester Wave for Integration-Centric BPM. For you non-subscribers, you can get the report from the webMethods Web site. webMethods has put a lot into its new version of the offering, part of the Fabric 7.0 suite.In addition to a real SOA platform under the covers -- a big part of why Forrester liked it -- webMethods has put in some BPM features that will knock your socks off. A unified Eclipse design environment with separate perspectives for business analysts and developers, no-code, drag-and-drop design, including an Ajax-slick task UI, an enterprise metadata library (a result of the Cerebra acquisition), an integrated Blaze Advisor for business rules management (sourced from Fair Issac and truly part of the BPMS). Also included is what has to be the best business activity monitoring (BAM) -- by far -- in the BPM space (and maybe even in the non-BPM BAM space as well).

I'm hoping to add webMethods -- along with some others who did well in the Forrester Wave, like Oracle and Tibco -- to the 2007 version of my BPMS Report series on BPM Institute.

Dr. Bruce Silver is an independent analyst, consultant and author of the BPMS Watch blog. Write him at [email protected]webMethods, which at the beginning of 2006 couldn't even break into the BPM analysts' magic circle/wave/whatever, ended the year taking top honors in the Forrester Wave for Integration-Centric Business Process Management. webMethods has put a lot into its new version of the offering. In addition to a real SOA platform under the covers, webMethods has included some BPM features that will knock your socks off.