‘Lone Wolf’ BPM Can Be Used for Integration

Did you know that 40 percent of the top 30 deals of $1 million or more in the last reported financial quarter included a middleware component? And that only three of those deals excluded middleware completely?

That’s according to a recent NASDAQ community analyst post by Zacks Equity Research, and it’s one reason the financial firm likes Red Hat’s recent acquisition of BPM (business process management) technology.

It seems Red Hat is acquiring BPM technology from Polymita Technologies S.L., a privately held company based in Spain. Financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but what is known is that Red Hat plans to integrate the tool with its JBoss Enterprise Middleware.

This will accelerate Red Hat’s entry into BPM, according to CRN, as well as complement its JBoss Enterprise Business Rules Management System platform (BRMS) and jBPM products.

That’s a tongue twister, but the point is this: The BPM technology will make Red Hat more competitive with other middleware vendors —IBM, Microsoft, VMWare, Oracle — since it will mean a more comprehensive product offering.

“We believe that Red Hat is emerging as a significant player in the middleware segment,” the Zacks Equity post notes.

BPM has always been something of a lone wolf, technologically speaking, but it is considered middleware and can be used for integration. In recent years, there’s been some movement in the industry to integrate BPM with data management and application integration.

As I shared last year, BPM expert and consultant Sandy Kemsley says this would simplify integration, Web services and analytics, because you’d be able to share a data model across BPM and the other systems, such as master data management.

CRN reports that Red Hat is also in the process of acquiring FuseSource, which develops open-source integration and messaging software.