Competitor landscape
has been analysed with the help of two frameworks. Figure 1 uses the classical
ambition matrix positioning Decentrlised Business Process Management or simply DBPM as a rather further out than
closer in innovation. We positioned multiply version of DBPM on the market
segment, because creating a cross-company business process between two
companies should not necessarily be regarded as a new market, perhaps not even
emerging. However creating business processes between companies, individuals
and IoT devices surely manifests as a new market segment.
Figure 1. Industry and competitive analysis with
ambition matrix
Figure 2
summarises the competitors on a rather architectural way concentrating on two
dimensions:
1. At the dimension of high trust architecture
the question is if the technology is based on Blockchain, providing a scalable
high-trust architecture by design, or on a classical client-server framework
(or perhaps old fashioned mainframe).
2. The diversity of
actors analyses how many different parties should be considered for a business
process, ranging from a one-company process to the processes of multiply
companies, individuals or intelligent gadgets.
Figure 3. Solution segmentation
Based on the two
orientation diagrams as well, we would argue that enterprise ready classical
Business Process solutions should be regarded as direct competitors of DBPM.
They do not necessarily focus directly on a cross-actor market, apart from some
examples like Kofax, but enterprise ready basically means that they can be
extended with some further development on a cross-company or even
cross-intelligent gadget scale. For example some of the ‘big players’, like
Oracle, IBM, or SAP implement cross-company functionalities as well. However on
the one hand they are not based on Blockchain solutions on the other hand they
require that the same solution is installed and licensed in all of the trusted
companies, like SAP processes between subsidiaries of a company. Enterprise
business process solutions can clearly compete on a markets where processes
between a few previously trusted companies should be implemented, but they will
have the weakness as soon as processes between a larger numbers of untrusted
actors should be set up.
As indirect
competitors we regard the whole smart contract market, including general
platforms, like Ethereum, Counterparty (Bitcoin based smart contract system) and systems like
Hyperledger. These platforms clearly provide the possibility to set up trust
between different untrusted actors based on smart contracts and Blockchain,
however they have rather a general focus and not a BPM specific one. As an
example a specific decentralised business process can surely be implemented as
a set of hard-coded smart contracts, but hard-coding one such a company
cooperation is completely different from providing a whole platform on which
such processes can be practically clicked together. Nevertheless the risk that
someone develops a competing solution on top of these frameworks is surely
bigger than zero.
Companies who
do something in the direction of multi-party trust system or business rules can
be regarded as potential competitors. The range is here pretty big, starting
from business rule engines like Decision, through digital business logic
platforms like Drools, to general IoT solutions, like Ritc. They seem
to be pretty far from DBPM at the first sight however they
have a similar and strong technology basis that can be further developed in the
direction of decentralised business process management without too much effort.
Based on the
previous analysis our competitive strategy is based on two major building
blocks:
1. Decentralised processes among large number of
possibly different kind of untrusted parties, including companies, individuals
and intelligent gadgets.
2. Low code solution in cooperation with local
consulting companies of different industrial fields, making possible that
decentralised processes are set up directly by the local experts of a certain
field or even by end-customers in a self-service way.
We see that
the market is pretty much in the emerging phase, hence the strategy is based on
segments, like IoT communication that are emerging markets themselves. As a
consequence we see the market and our competitive strategy as a blue ocean one.
