Red Hat Extends Open Source BPM Momentum

As a champion of open source software Red Hat (RHT) may be best known for its distribution of Linux, but it turns out that the company’s fastest growing product in terms of adoption is actually its open source business process management (BPM) software.

With the releases today of upgraded Red Hat JBoss BPM Suite and Red Hat JBoss BRMS, Red Hat is trying to capitalize on that momentum by including new planning software in those releases that was developed by the OptaPlanner JBoss open source community project, said Phil Simpson, principal product marketing manager for BPM software at Red Hat.

The Red Hat BPM software is designed to make it simpler for Java developers to extend the JBoss application server platform to create BPM applications, Simpson said. Its increased adoption is being driven in equal parts by new greenfield applications and customers that are abandoning commercial BPM software developed by IBM (IBM) and Oracle (ORCL).

In those cases, Simpson said the costs associated with both the BPM software and the WebSphere and WebLogic application servers to run those applications are driving customers to evaluate less-expensive open source options. In addition, he noted, Red Hat gives customers the option of deploying those BPM applications on premise or within the Red Hat OpenShift platform-as-a-service (PaaS) environment, which he noted is also less expensive than rival PaaS platforms.

Simpson noted Red Hat is finding a number of new customers who, given the costs associated with commercial BPM software, would never have considered deploying a BPM application if it wasn’t available under an open source license.

While some solution providers might be loath to give up the margins generated by commercial software, Red Hat is making the case for recouping those lost revenues by extending the base of customers through which more profitable application development and support services can be delivered. Rather than asking customers to make a multimillion dollar investment in commercial software, Red Hat makes it viable for more customers to start smaller BPM projects that will grow as the value of the BPM application continues to prove itself.

Given the success that open source software has already enjoyed at the operating system and application server level, it’s only been a matter of time before open source software made its presence felt further up the application stack. The choice now for many solution providers is either ignore that reality or find a way to incorporate open source application frameworks in a way that reduces the dollar value of the deal but still is profitable, as more customer money gets plowed into higher-margin application services provided by the solution provider.