Roundup of vendor reactions to Lombardi purchase

Wednesday, December 23, 2009 by Neil Ward-Dutton

For perhaps no other reason than to chart the rise of the blog as a marketing/promotion/positioning tool, it’s interesting to see how some of Lombardi’s competitors have used corporate blogs to publish reactions to the recent news of Lombardi’s impending acquisition by IBM.

Here’s Appian’s take from CEO Matt Calkins (fun quote: “Lombardi has now marginalized itself, and will soon be entangled in the IBM stack.”)

Here’s Pegasystems’ take from CEO Alan Trefler (fun quote: “Having multiple BPM suites that rely on excessive integration is a recipe for frustration.” Although I disagree with Trefler’s comment “They say they will ‘preserve’ Lombardi within its mix of disparate stack applications… is that a good idea? We don’t think so.” What’s the alternative? Tell all Lombardi’s customers to go jump off a bridge? There’s clearly a challenge here, but IBM would be mad to curtail support for Lombardi customers.)

Here’s an irreverent take from Software AG’s Miko Matsumura (fun quote: “For a Venture Capital backed company, the term ‘undisclosed sum’ is almost like ‘left to spend more time with his family‘”. This is sleight-of-hand: IBM never discloses the sums it pays for privately-held companies it acquires, quite possibly to avoid giving any future acquisition targets clues as to what IBM is willing to pay.)

Lastly for now, here’s something from the horse’s mouth: IBM’s Angel Diaz (fun quote: “Lombardi’s department-level approach to delivering process management complements IBM’s existing strengths in enterprise-wide process management software.” This “departmental” positioning of Lombardi is something that a number of commentators have already picked up on, and I sense that IBM is already starting to revisit that to refine it.)

Of course it’s important to take all these posts with a pinch of salt – in my book they fall under the heading of “well they would say that, wouldn’t they”. But there are interesting nuggets in there nonetheless.

Posted in BPM