A new, independent research report by Forrester named IBM as a leader in Human Centric Business Process Management (BPM). "The Forrester Wave: Human-Centric BPMS for Insurance, Q3 2006" found that IBM's insurance specific attributes and strategies, and its overall BPMS functionality helped IBM achieve its leadership position.

Business processes are the underpinnings of any organization and include activities such as receiving orders, distributing products, or invoicing for services. Automating and reusing these processes throughout a company's various departments and divisions can result in significant cost savings by sharing best practices while eliminating the duplication of efforts. BPM software is increasingly being developed on a service-oriented architecture based on its ability to support changes to the processes without impacting the underlying technology.

Forrester found that "IBM is a Leader about to get stronger in the BPMS market for insurance."

"Business Process Management is critical to the success of an organization's SOA strategy because it enables business processes to be more agile, flexible, and competitive, and enables continuous process improvement and innovation," said Sandy Carter, vice president, SOA and WebSphere, IBM Software. "IBM's position as a leader in Human-Centric underscores the company's commitment to delivering BPM tools that support both the specific needs of this vertical market as well as the business needs across various industries."

IBM has a strong commitment to the BPM market, as evidenced by hundreds of customer implementations and a full range of software capabilities -- from process modeling tools for business analysts, to executive dashboards and the only Process Server in the industry that combines both strong human- and integration-centric capabilities. In addition, the IBM ecosystem for BPM offers Business Partners a set of frameworks for information, processes, events, business rules and workplace and business systems. These frameworks include tools for software developers, core IBM middleware technology, and technical education and support to enable Business Partners to provide customers with BPM solutions unique to their industries. IBM also recently announced its intent to acquire FileNet, a leader in content-centric BPM.