IBM on December 16th announced it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Lombardi. Financial terms were not disclosed. IBM’s press release stated that Lombardi's department-level approach to delivering process management complements IBM's existing strengths in enterprise-wide process management software. The statement went on to say that Lombardi through its collaborative, graphical approach to process application development based on a WebSphere infrastructure would extend IBM's customisable, role-based capabilities to empower business users to rapidly effect change in their businesses.
So this acquisition following IBM’s acquisition last year of iLog and Software AG’s acquisition of IDS Scheer earlier this year seems to show that at last the BPMS market is starting to coalesce. However I am not sure how this acquisition will benefit both parties’ customers. Both Lombardi and IBM WebSphere have rival products. Lombardi does have a very interesting and good SaaS downloadable strategic tool in Blueprint, which is not in the IBM BPMS portfolio. I will be interested to see and learn how the integration of Lombardi and IBM goes. So watch this space.
