Australian BPM market to grow 2.4% this year

Spending on business process management (BPM) suites by Australian organisations is on track to grow 2.4% in 2015 to $74.1 million, according to Gartner.

The global market is set to grow 4.4% to US$2.7 billion ($3.5 billion) as organisations worldwide commence their digital transformation, the firm predicts.

While Australia is behind the global growth curve, spending in New Zealand is expected to increase 6.2% to NZ$7.2 million ($6.7 million).

Ahead of the Gartner BPM Summit in Sydney this week, Gartner Research Director Rob Dunie said today's business leaders are finding it challenging to effectively manage business process due to the inflexibility of legacy systems. This is fuelling a shift towards what Gartner terms an intelligent business process management suite (iBPMS).

"An iBPMS supports business responsiveness, often at the 'moment of truth' in a customer interaction," he said.

"The ability to provide more 'joined up' insight into business processes through the use of analytics - combined with support for the people involved in processes, allowing them to take advantage of this insight - is what differentiates today's iBPMS market from earlier BPMS technology markets."

Dunie said Gartner has identified four significant trends driving the iBPMS market this year. These include a refocusing on business transformation rather than continuous process improvement, as well as the integration of emerging technologies including the Internet of Things (IoT), combined with advanced analytics.

Third, because iBPMS are best suited to managing long-lived business processes, pure service oriented architecture (SOA) is no longer a focus for vendors pursuing this space. Finally, mobile, social, cloud and analytics features are better integrated into iBPMSs than they were in 2014.

Gartner notes that while iBPMSs can be powerful tools, they may be overly complex for organisations facing relatively low rates of change or very low BPM maturity.

Vendors in the iBPMS market range from those focusing on the infrastructure stack to document- and content-centred vendors expanding into the market, as well as newer innovators focused on developing products from business-oriented modelling techniques.

Mobile broadband not just for smartphones

Another technology trend Gartner is tracking is the increasing variety of devices connecting to mobile internet networks.

More than 112 million non-smartphone connected devices - including mobile PCs, tablets and mobile hotspot devices - will be sold worldwide this year, up 5.6% from 2014, Gartner predicts.

Shipments of cellular-embedded mobile PCs, such as notebooks and premium ultramobiles, will increase from 1.8 million last year to 4.9 million in 2019, the research firm said. Total penetration will meanwhile rise from 1.3 to 2.7% of total mobile PCs over the same period.

Premium ultramobiles are the fastest-growing category but from the lowest base. Gartner expects shipments to grow from under 500,000 units last year to 3.2 million in 2019. Sales of cellular-embedded networks will increase from 1.3 million to 1.6 million over the same period.

Tablets represent the largest segment of cellular-embedded devices with sales of 50 million units in 2014. Gartner forecasts that this will increase to 76 million units in 2019.

Cellular-embedded tablets are more popular in emerging markets, with 62% of sales coming from these areas. While in the US only 25% of tablets are cellular-embedded, this percentage rises to 52% in India.

Sales of cellular-embedded mobile hotspot devices are meanwhile predicted to grow from 54 million in 2014 to 70 million in 2019. Demand for USB modem-type hotspot devices is being replaced by the more flexible wireless hotspots.

According to Gartner Research Director Tracy Tsai, the growing popularity of non-smartphone connected devices is prompting device vendors and telcos to explore new revenue opportunities. One example involves device vendors teaming up with operators to offer free data as a promotion on cellular-embedded notebook sales.

“There is also potential for accelerated growth in this market,” she said. “Gartner predicts the price gap between cellular and noncellular devices will narrow to less than 10%, or $20. When this happens, the adoption of cellular devices will accelerate beyond 160 million in 2019, with the potential of more than 600 million units in 2019.”

Image courtesy of LuMaxArt under CC