Who’s next on the HP BPM Aquistions list?

After the recent news that Open Text is to acquire Metastorm, it has been revealed that the long rumoured HP talks with Tibco have not gone as planned.

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According to a Reuters article,

Hewlett-Packard Co (HPQ.N) had considered buying business software company Tibco Software Inc (TIBX.O) until two weeks ago when talks fizzled, two sources familiar with the matter told Reuters.

The Reuters article goes on to say that

It was not clear why the talks fell apart or if they will be resumed, although the tech giant is currently scouring the industry for other software targets, the sources said.

Tibco has been the subject of takeout rumors for the past several years, yet the company has never disclosed that it has been in talks to sell itself.

The question now is who will HP target to fill its capability gaps? Doug Henschen (InformationWeek) thinks that

If HP is now shopping for other companies, as Reuters’ report suggests, Software AG and Progress Softwareare both potential targets, given their integration, SOA infrastructure, and business process management software. Software AG is larger than Tibco, with about $1.4 billion in revenue last year. Progress is smaller, at $156 million in 2010 revenue.

What are your thoughts?

Ovum Publish BPM Vendor Decision Matrix

According to a press release from Metastorm, Ovum have released a new report about the BPM Vendor market.

The report evaluates BPM vendors based on a quantitative assessment of their market impact, end-user sentiment, and technology offering, and places them in one of three categories — explore, consider, or shortlist.

The analysis has considered various Vendors including: – Cordys, Oracle, Lombardi, Intalio, Pegasystems, SAP, Tibco, Metastorm and IBM. The press release states that Ovum have concluded the following:

Metastorm is placed in the elite “shortlist” category, which not only distinguishes its integrated software suite as “best of breed,” but also designates Metastorm as a vendor that should always be on the shortlist for any enterprise evaluating BPM solutions. According to the report, Metastorm is at “the very summit of the BPM competitive landscape.”

By contrast, Oracle and Savvion were the other vendors who made it into the ‘Shortlist’ category, while Lombardi, Appian, Active Endpoints, Ultimus, IBM and Pegasystems were in the ‘Consider’ category followed by AuraPortal, Cordys, Intalio, SAP and Tibco in the ‘Explore’ category.

I would be interested to hear your thoughts and experiences on Metastorm and if they should be on every evalutaion shortlist. The report can be found here for anybody who is interested.