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Australian Organisations to Spend $63 Million on Business Process Management Suites in 2012: Gartner

Announcement posted by Gartner 21 Aug 2012

Australian organisations are expected to spend almost A$63 million on business process management suites (BPMS) in 2012, an increase of 9.3 percent over 2011, according to Gartner. Worldwide spending on BPMS is expected to reach US$2.6 billion, up 6.9 percent compared to 2011.

Speaking at the Gartner Business Process Management Summit in Sydney this week, Gartner managing vice president John Dixon said the continued growth in the BPMS market worldwide was an indicator of BPM adoption among end users and showed a commitment to BPM as a strategic tool for improving business performance. However, despite overall growth, BPM maturity remains low.

“As BPM adoption grows, it is not surprising that the influx of organisations newly exploring BPM will have an impact on overall BPM maturity levels,” said Mr. Dixon. “In last year's Gartner survey data we saw maturity levels increase, and we continue to see this trend, however, these levels are still relatively low. Among organisations that have taken Gartner's ITScore for Business Process Management survey, 15 percent are at Level 1 (the lowest level of maturity) and 75 percent are at Level 2. None had yet made it to Level 5. Much work remains to be done to deliver the game-changing performance improvements that that BPM promises.”

Skills shortage hampering BPM efforts

Gartner surveys indicate that a lack of trained and experienced BPM professionals is negatively impacting the ability of organisations to deliver against their enterprise objectives. Therefore, the need to find and recruit appropriate resources is a significant challenge for BPM hiring managers. This resource constraint is being felt by end-user, vendor, and consulting and system integration organisations alike.

“Part of the challenge in finding suitable resources is the broad skill set required to be successful in BPM,” Mr Dixon said. Gartner has seen BPM certifications starting to show promise and the number of BPM-certified individuals increase, which may go some way toward mitigating this challenge.

BPM is changing to add more intelligence

Business managers are being asked to make faster and better decisions in an ever-changing business context, according to Gartner, but cannot do so without improved visibility into their operations and environments. To meet this challenge, leading organisations are seeking to make their business operations more intelligent by integrating analytics into their processes and the applications that enable them. Gartner has identified this trend as a new usage scenario for a BPMS, called "intelligent business operations".

“As a result, we have evolved its definition of the BPM market to include a new generation of BPMSs, which we identify as intelligent BPMSs or iBPMS,” said Mr Dixon. “This is a developing space, because "intelligent" processes are still a considerable distance away for many organisations.”

Gartner presented its new Magic Quadrant for iBPMS for the first time during the BPM Summit in Sydney this week, naming leading global vendors in this new category.

Emerging technologies to deliver transformational benefits

Technologies offering transformational benefits will drive further growth in BPM, such as social software, mobility and cloud computing, according to Gartner.

“Social BPM and social network analysis (SNA) are emerging technologies that are expected to take five to 10 years to reach mainstream adoption, yet deliver transformational benefits,” said Mr. Dixon. “The move to cloud computing has also affected BPM, with BPM platform as a service and cloud-enabled BPM platforms also set to become mainstream in two to five years.”

An Australian BPMS vendor, XMPro, was identified as one of five ‘Cool Vendors in BPM’ by Gartner in 2012. These vendors demonstrate how business process management is combining cloud, social, mobile computing and process-aware information to shape the next generation of application development, decision management and business process optimisation. ‘Cool Vendors’ is an annual series of Gartner research designed to highlight interesting, new and innovative vendors, products and services in a given product or service category.

Additional information on BPM technologies is available in the Gartner report ‘Hype Cycle for Business Process Management, 2012’ available on Gartner’s website at http://www.gartner.com/resId=2096519. The Gartner Hype Cycle reports track technologies and technology vendors across a comprehensive set of markets and market segments, evaluating their technological capabilities, business value and real-world viability.

About the Gartner Business Process Management Summit 2012

The Gartner BPM Summit is designed to meet the needs of BPM practitioners, business and IT change leaders at every level of maturity, from those who are planning their first BPM initiative to those who are ready to stretch the boundaries of BPM programs already in place. During the Summit, Gartner analysts will explore proven BPM best practices and the latest BPM technologies and deliver the actionable insights, information and problem-solving needed to create or expand a successful BPM program. For further information about the Gartner BPM Summit please visit: www.gartner.com/ap/bpm

About Gartner

Gartner, Inc. (NYSE: IT) is the world's leading information technology research and advisory company. Gartner delivers the technology-related insight necessary for its clients to make the right decisions, every day. From CIOs and senior IT leaders in corporations and government agencies, to business leaders in high-tech and telecom enterprises and professional services firms, to technology investors, Gartner is a valuable partner in 12,000 distinct organizations. Through the resources of Gartner Research, Gartner Executive Programs, Gartner Consulting and Gartner Events, Gartner works with every client to research, analyze and interpret the business of IT within the context of their individual role. Founded in 1979, Gartner is headquartered in Stamford, Connecticut, USA, and has 5,200 associates, including 1,280 research analysts and consultants, and clients in 85 countries. For more information, visit www.gartner.com.

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