We received a question recently from an organization that doesn't have a BPM infrastructure but would like to apply a BAM product that will monitor business events in its operational applications. Here is a Definition of BAM (from Wikipedia).
BAM products are built to work as stand-alone tools that monitor events data regardless of where that data resides (whether the source for this data is BPM, ERP, DW, legacy application or any other sources).
The field of BAM holds a great promise – it can tell us what is going on with our organizational processes (which is one of our more important assets and differentiator). This area has many names – business process intelligence (BPI), some call it operational BI, BAM etc.
However, despite the high potential for business value, only about 30% of organizations who have entered BPM (more "natural" candidates for BAM) have actually implemented the BAM module. In Israel, this percentage is much lower. Organizations who have entered BPM did not include BAM as part of the project, but in a round table we held on BPM, these organizations actually recommended other organizations not to wait with BAM and implement it in the first stage.
The BAM vendor landscape changed dramatically in the past years. Just 5 years ago, the BAM market was dominated by best of breed vendors. Over the years, BAM vendors were acquired by BPM suite vendors. Today, BAM is considered more a part of BPM suite or a BI module than an independent stand alone market. A recent trend is the combination of BAM capabilities with packaged application to increase visibility to processes that are managed in these applications (For example, Pegasystem's [BPM vendor] acquisition of Chordiant [customer experience vendor] will enable ongoing monitoring and improvements of organizations' interactions with customers).
