AIC's Sferrazza also says that his company isn't ready to undertake a project on a grand scale, although he does plan to use the Sajus monitoring tools for other self-contained business processes. "We can effectively monitor our systems," he says. And for now, AIC's focus is on squeezing the last bit of efficiency out of that monitoring. His other concern is that the company will come to rely too heavily on monitoring software, raising his IT costs. "I can see a day where I will become so dependent [on BPM] that I need several people just to make sure that the processes are being monitored," he says. In other words, if monitoring is the key to automation, then someone needs to monitor the monitoring software.

Furthermore, as with other evolving technologies, the marketplace is bound to consolidate. Most companies that sell BPM products are small and those products address one type of BPM function. There is always a chance that your vendor could go out of business, leaving you to support a product yourself. Austvold says the products from small companies are often better, however.

"You have a couple of choices," says Richard Soley, CEO of the standards organization the Object Management Group. "Go with a large vendor who you don't think is going away or you go with a [smaller vendor that uses a] standard. Obviously [this sounds] self-serving, but I don't see what else you can do, besides ignore it" and hope your competitor doesn't gamble more successfully.

There are several standards for BPM, such as the emerging Business Process Execution Language (BPEL), and more mature Web standards, such as Web Services Description Language and Java Message Service. Soley says every vendor uses some type of standard, and you need to choose one that is compatible with your existing applications. Finding out if a vendor uses standards should be part of your due diligence process before you buy.