Consultants Typology: The Consultant who Knows Everything

The post: Two Types of Consultants: Niche vs. All Around, was the first post about Consultants typology. The post differentiated between Niche Consultant, whose knowledge and experience is focused in a Niche and All Around Consultants, who know and understand a variety of Niches and topics.

If you read the Customers Typology posts, you probably read: Customers Typology: The Customer who Knows Everything. 

The behavioral patterns of the Consultant who Knows Everything resemble the behavioral patterns of the Customer Who Knows Everything. 

The only difference is that the Customer is capable of making decisions. The Consultant is only advising. 

Is there a Consultants who knows everything?

No, but I had worked with All Around Consultants who know and understand a lot about large number of topics. Some of them have the Capability of learning quickly and understanding deeply new topics.

Of course, the number of theses extraordinary consultants is limited. However, other good All Around Consultants know and understand many topics. 

One may know 7 topics, another 10 topics etc. It is a continuum.
Even some of the Niche Consultants' knowledge could be in two or three different topics. 

It should be noticed, that an All Around Consultant's knowledge and understanding level may vary: In one niche his knowledge could be similar to the knowledge of the best Niche consultants. In another niche his knowledge and understanding could be limited.   
  

Two types of Consultants Knowing Everything

The best All Around Consultants are not included in the group of Consultants Knowing Everything.

In a meeting with one of them (and about twenty Customer's employees) he said: "You should know what you do not know".

The Consultant Knowing Everything do not know everything. They know and understand less than many other consultants.
Usually they label themselves as the best All Around Consultants.

There are two distinct types of Knowing Everything consultants.

The First type: Impressive Past
The first type of The Knowing everything consultant was a CXO years ago. Sometimes he was a successful CIO.  
Information Technology is dynamic and changing. He is no longer a CXO. However, he thinks that he knows everything because of the good old days.

Sometimes the Customer's CIO was his subordinate ten or twenty years ago. The Consultant believes that he knows more and understands more than the CIO. Well, that was true 20 years ago...

The Second type: Sales experts

The first type has impressive past. The second type of the Consultant who Knows Everything could not be proud of his past achievements. 

A second type consultant main qualification is sales. Due to mastering Sales he may convince a Customer that he is the leading expert in any topic, niche or subject.

The Customer may not discover the truth even after a failure. The consultant could find someone else to blame for the failure and convince the Customer that the failure is not because he lacks the skills, but despite of his enormous contribution.

What should The Customer do?

If you can avoid of a Consultant who Knows Everything , do it. 

Ask for recommendations and experience and verify or deny his claims.

The risk is in following his recommendations in a topic he knows nothing about.

Even if you hired him, do not hesitate to hire another Consultant, as soon as you discover that Knowing Everything stands for not knowing the topic, the Niche, the Technology, The system or the Architecture you are trying to get help for. 

Customers Typology: The Captive who Knows Everything

One of the posts in the Customers Typology series was titled: Customers Typology: The Captive. I described The Captive as: "The Captive Customer's opinion is that someone else is the Oracle. He will do whatever the Oracle will say". Frequently the Oracle is a Software and/or Hardware vendor.

Another post was titled: Customers Typology: The Customer who Knows Everything. I described customer of that type as: "This Customer type is sure that he knows more than anyone else. He is also sure that his understanding is better than any body's understanding".

Would you imagine that there is another customer type combining both types? 

You probably hardly believe that this type is not a fiction story.

If he is a Captive, he will do exactly what his Captor will recommend.   
If he Knows Everything, he will follow only his opinion.

The best way to describe this type is by example. The example is of a long time ago Case Study.

IT Consulting Assignment 
A non-Information Technology friend called me. He is performing an Audit for a CEO. Is it possible that I will join him in order to address the IT aspects?
I accepted the challenge.

The Background
The most Business Critical Application was developed many years ago. The IDE is obsolete. Only one employee has the skills required for maintaining the application.
It is clear that the system should be developed from scratch using a Mainstream IDE.

A Large development Project was initiated. After two years the development completed. 

The IT department built the same functionality and the same processes included in the old system without functional changes. They thought that it is only Technical transformation: usage of a new IDE instead the obsolete IDE. 

Unfortunately, The Business Customer, who was not participated in the development process (and probably was notified about the Development Project after its completion), thought that the new system does not address his requirements properly.

How should the CEO solve the problem?

1. The organization built a new system. 

2. The organization spend a lot of money and human resources. 

3. The new System probably do not address the Business Customer needs. 

The key questions to ask are:

1. What should the organization do in order to minimize the damage?
Should it rebuild the system again? should it adapt the system to the Business users needs? or should it ask the Business users to adapt to the system?

2. What lessons should be learned from the failure?

The CEO decided to do an audit by external Subject Matter Expert. He chose my friend as the external  Subject Matter Expert.

A note about Business and IT Gap
SOA is about Business and IT Alignment. Every time I am lecturing on SOA, I talk about the Business-IT Gap before diving into technical details. If you read posts in my blog, you may find that I repeat and repeat this idea. Read for example:

Will Business and IT Aligned?

SOA and SCS

STKI Summit 2011 - SOA Perspective: Business Services or only Integration 

This Case Study is an example I am using to describe to my students Business-IT Gap as part of my SOA lecture.

My Role
My role in the audit was to evaluate the Information Technology aspects of the system.

When my friend told me which IDE was selected, I told him immediately that it is a wrong decision.
I also told him that I am capable of bringing the vendor's employees and they will support my viewpoint about the IDE their company developed.

Why would employees recommend not to use their company's products?
The company already developed a lot better IDE. They prefer that customers use a good product and not a limited product. I guess that in 3-5 years the vendor will not support the old IDE.

The customer was a Captive Customer. I would surely recommend usage of the new IDE developed by the same vendor. 

How come that the Customer was a Captive and a Customer who Knows Everything simultaneously?
The answer is simple: If he were not a Customer who Knows Everything, he would ask for the Vendor's experts recommendation.

I am 100% sure that anyone working for the Vendor and any good external Consultant will recommend usage of the new and better IDE (under the assumption that it should be an IDE developed by this vendor). 

Two types of Consultants: Niche vs. All Around

Leonardo da Vinci (probably self-portrait). source: Hebrew Wikipedia

It is time to classify Consultants after so many posts about Clients Typology (e.g. Clients Typology: The Stealth, The Captive, The Paralyzed Analyzer). 

I do not know if the terms I am using: Niche Consultant and All Around Consultant are the best terms to use. 

If you think that other terms are more accurate, please comment. Anyway, I am trying to distinguish between two types of Professionals, Consultants, Scientists or Experts.

Most of them could be labeled as Niche experts: They know almost everything about a relatively narrow subject matter.

Leonardo da Vinchi (1452-1519), whose portrait appears right after the heading of this post, could not be depicted as a Niche expert. he is a classic example of The All Around type. I will quote the English Wikipedia: " ... Da Vinchi was an Italian Renaissance polymath: painter, sculptor, architect, musician, mathematician, engineer, inventor, anatomist, geologist, cartographer, botanist and writer". 

Most, if not all, of the All Around Consultants'   knowledge Subject Matters are very limited in comparison to the vast knowledge areas of a genius like Da Vinchi. However, usually their knowledge is a lot wider than the Niche Consultants' knowledge. 

The difference between the two Consultants types could be roughly described as Wider Knowledge vs. Deeper Knowledge.

Advantages of Niche Consultant
The obvious advantage of a Niche Consultant is his experience. He acquired tremendous experience in the specific domain in which all, or at least most of the tasks, he performed are part of. 

Another advantage is the knowledge he acquired while learning the Subject Matter and during execution of assignments in this Subject Matter. 

If, and usually only if, the assignment is well defined within the boundaries of his expertise niche he could be a good candidate for performing the assignment. 

Advantages of All Around Consultant
The main advantage of the All Around Consultant is his wide perspective.

Another advantage of the All Around Consultant is the capability to learn and understand new topics, systems, technologies etc.

This requirement is embedded in his Role. He will face new topics and new connections between topics and 
has no other choice than learning them and acquire a certain level of understanding of them.

The Niche Consultant is obliged to learn only new approaches and technologies related to his narrow niche. 

The assignments which are best fit for this Consultant type are assignments related to multiple domains, multiple Business issues and multiple applications and IT technologies.

It is not as simple as described above
It is not as simple as described above. I used the term "roughly" in the first paragraph intentionally.
Not every Niche Consultant knowledge is deeper than the knowledge of every All Around Consultant, even in his domain of knowledge.

Not every All Around Consultant is capable of generalizing  from one case to another case and from one Niche to another.

Not every All Around Consultant us capable of grasping the "whole picture" i.e the relationships between domains, architectures, processes and Business issues which are related to a wide range  assignment.  

The Value Proposition of a Consultant is not determined only by individual differences. The assignment could be handled by a team including more than one consultant.

Another consultant could complement the skill set of a Niche Consultant and/or All Around Consultant.
In that case the Consultant's ability to work in a team could be a factor favoring one consultant or another consultant.   

 A Personal Note
 I was fired in the age of 44 after more than twenty years I worked for a unit of a governmental ministry. When I was fired, the unit of the governmental bureau was completing a Privatization process. 

After working as a Systems Group Manager, Systems Programmer and a Programmer, I started to work as an Independent IT Consultant.

I was a Niche expert in Mainframe MVS Operating System. 

It was not easy to find assignments in my Niche, due to the following reasons:

1. People believed that the Mainframe is Dead. For more information read the post: Mainframe and the Dinosaurs Myth revisited. If you would read that post, you will probably discover that the Mainframe is not dead yet. At 2014 it celebrated its 50th year.

2. I was considered as too old for Information Technology assignments. Read the post: Information Technology: Are you out of Business if your age is above 50?

3. I was considered as overqualified for technical assignments

In order to earn money for the daily needs of my family (including three children) I had to work.

I found Consultancy assignments in other Niches. Each time I learned new Subject Matters, technologies, Architectures and various Organizational Cultures.

I adapted to a new form of Pareto principle:  In few months understand and know more than 80% of the Niche Consultants working for years. This principle is applicable to any Niche you happened to get an assignment.

After few years of working according to the new form of Pareto Principle cited above, I was no longer a Niche Consultant but an All Around Information Technology Consultant.

Clients Typology: The Stealth

Picture Source: Wikipedia

The aeroplane in the picture above is Lockheed Martin's F-35 Lightening II. Its nickname is The Stealth. Stealth Technology reduces reflection/emission of radar infrared visible light. The reduction of infrared visible light make the Stealth Technology air crafts more difficult for conventional radar to detect.   

Responsibility is an abstract concept. Imagine that responsibility is not abstract but something analog to aircraft detection. The Stealth Customer escapes from it like a Stealth Technology aircraft would escape from detection by radar. 

What is wrong with taking Responsibility?
I studied Psychology about 30 years ago. In an experiment I studied about, monkeys had to perform tasks. The experiment was performed by Joseph V.Brady in 1958.

After few months monkeys who were "managers" i.e. were responsible for tasks other monkeys preformed, suffered from ulcer. "non-managers" monkeys where as healthy as they were prior to performing the tasks.

The results were explained by worries due to responsibility.
The "managers" worried the "simple workers" had to perform exactly what the "managers" asked them to do: No worries and no ulcer. 

The results could be extrapolated to human beings. 
The Stealth Customer does not want to worry. 
Why should he take responsibility and destroy his health?
He takes no responsibility.

When the Stealth is a Worker
If he is not a manager, he can perform his duties without taking responsibility.
Other co-workers may be fascinated by his stories about restaurants, vacations in exotic countries, his friends and hobbies. He is cooperating with his co-workers. No problem could be identifed.

The Peter Principle
The Peter Principle is a concept in Management Theory. The selection of  candidate is based on his current performance in another role rather than on relevant abilities to the new role.  

The result of this selection method is that they will tend to be promoted until they reach their "position of incompetence".

That could happen to the Stealth as well. He will be promoted to a management position. Sometimes he will be promoted even to an upper management position.

As you already know, the Stealth Customer will not take responsibility. A manager who is not taking the responsibility, he was expected to take, could harm the organization.  

In order to avoid of responsibility, he may use behavioral patterns of other customers type, such as The Bad, The Captive, The Paralysed Analyzer and The Covering.

Another way of avoiding Responsibility
The Stealth may use the patterns cited above. However, he could also avoid of responsibility by transferring it to another manager. It could be a very responsible manager higher in the hierarchy or a manager in the same level of the Stealth. It could even be a manager, the Stealth is managing. 
The Stealth could not care less about the other manager identity, as long as he is not taking the Responsibility.

How should a Consultant deal with the Stealth Customer?

1. He could find someone else in the organization who will take responsibility instead of the Stealth.
The natural candidates are cited in the previous section. 

2. Work with another manager in the organization instead of the Stealth. 
This method is not always possible.

3. Train the Stealth to take responsibility.
This is the most unlikely method, because in most cases it is difficult and no resources are preallocated for training.

SaaS vendor leading the CRM Market

According to recent Gartner CRM Market Report Salesforce.com is the Worldwide CRM Software Spendings market leader with 16% in 2013.
SAP is second with 13% and Oracle third with 10%.

As far as Revenue Growth from 2012 to 2013 is concerned, Salesforce.com is leading with 30.3%.
Microsoft following with 22.8% and IBM with 22% Revenues Growth. SAP growth rate is 12.7%. Oracle is lagging with 4%. 

According to the same Gartner's report, 41% of CRM Systems are SaaS-based.

Seven years ago    

Seven years ago the data was not resembling current data.
Oracle after acquiring Siebel and PeopleSoft was the biggest CRM vendor.
SAP was its main competitor. 

The growth rate of a new market player, Microsoft,  in the SMB market was high.

New SaaS CRM players emerged. The most sinificant SaaS CRM player was Salesforce.com.  

SaaS is Mainstream
The CRM market data is indicating that SaaS is Mainstream.

Read other posts about SaaS showing maturation of SaaS: 
January, 2009: SaaS is Going Mainstream 
May, 2010: Integrating SaaS: IBM's Cast Iron Acquisition First Take
August, 2011: Hyped Cloud Computing Technologies
March, 2012: ERP as a SaaS maturity indicator
February, 2014: SaaS is Mainstream


My Take
If and when ERP market data will be similar to the CRM market data depicted in this post, we could argue that SaaS is not only Mainstream but is going to be the dominant paradigm.

The Next Generation of Private Clouds

The Public Cloud is a promise. A promise for a new model without an Information Technology department. 

Unlike the Public Cloud, the Private Cloud is nothing to write home about. Utility Computing disguised in modern and attractive name. 

Reality is not as simple as described in the paragraphs above. 

If you read the article Tectonic shift as Public Cloud giants acknowledge the private deployment options, you will discover that even Amazon and Google admit that Public Cloud is not a magical solution for all problems.

There is a necessity for Private Clouds. There are systems for which Public Cloud is not adequate. 

Private Cloud
It is relatively easy to define Public Cloud. There are various different definitions of Private Cloud. 
The main definitions could be categorized as follows:

1. Cloud which is located within the Enterprise boundaries. 
Utility Computing may fit to this definition. If the organization provides Information Technology services it may include Multi-Tenancy instances. For example, a Large Bank's Core Banking Systems, provides services to few small banks in addition to the Large Bank users. 

2. An external Cloud which provides services to a single Enterprise
The Cloud is outside the Organization's Data Centers. However, it serves only a single organization.
A Private Cloud defined as cited above, may realize  some of the advantages of Public Cloud, e.g.  less dependency on the IT Department and easier Provisioning.
It will not be cheap as a Multi-Tenant Public Cloud.

3. Virtualization and Elastic Provisioning
The advantages of Private Cloud defined as cited above are described by the definition. 
However, it is not clear what differentiate it from Virtualization and Elastic Provisioning, which has nothing to do with Clouds.

Current Generation
Whatever Private Cloud definition we prefer, Current Generation of Private Clouds is based upon Commodity Servers. Usually, the applications are lightweight and non-Core Business applications.

The term commodity in this context refers to Linux and Windows Operating Systems Servers. They may be deployed under VMware or other Hypervisors.

Next Generation
According to Forrester Consulting's paper titled: "Private Clouds Will Use Hybrid Infrastructure", Next Generation Private Clouds will not be based solely upon commodity Servers.

The paper was written in January 2013. It was sponsored by IBM. Forrester's survey population included 200 IT decisions-makers in organizations with 500+ employees in North-America, United Kingdom, Germany and Brazil.

Some of the Key Findings are:

1. Building a Private Cloud is a Priority of nearly half of all Enterprises.
This finding conforms with Google's and Amazon's views of the Private Cloud cited in the beginning of this post.
Even if the Public Cloud is "sexier" and better defined than the Private Cloud you can not ignore large number of enterprises building Private Clouds.

2. Cloud Management and Security are a must
Customers need Standardized Operation Procedures, Security and fully automated Management.

3. Efficiency and Price are important
Technically, Efficiency and lower costs imply Multi-Tenancy and maximum resources utilization.

4. Next Generation Cloud should be utilized Hybrid Platforms  
Forget about commodity servers only Clouds.
It is too early to think of The end of the Mainframe. 
67% of  survey respondents said access to Mainframe Data was critically important or very important in cloud environments.
   
My Take
New Information Technology paradigms are not a one size fits all solutions. In my Service Oriented Presentations, since it was a buzz, I always included one or two slides describing the systems which were bad fit for SOA. 

Another slide described an Enterprise fully transformed to SOA. Few non-SOA systems were included in the slide (in different colour).

Public Cloud is an excellent solution for SMBs problems. However, as far as most Large Enterprises are concerned, for the coming years, Hybrid Clouds will be the appropriate solution.

Successful Cloud Computing deployment should be based upon deploying the right systems in the Public Cloud, the right systems in the Private Cloud and integrating them together as a unified Architecture.

Private Clouds will not be solely based upon Commodity Servers (Windows, Linux, VMware etc.).
Expect heterogeneous Private Clouds which will include multiple servers such as UNIX and Mainframes in addition to Windows and Linux.

I wonder if Next Generation Public Clouds will be solely Commodity Servers based. I suspect that they will not.  

Will Software AG Survive until 2019? - Revisited

I am not happy to Revisit a Vendor Survival post saying that my prediction that a vendor will not survive was correct (for example, SUN).

If a vendor is not a monopoly, I am not happy to find that the probability that it will survive is lower than it was (Apple, HP etc.).

Even if it is a monopoly in specific markets and not a monopoly in others, I am not happy to find that its Survival probability is lower than it was (Microsoft). 

The reason that I am not happy is that competition is good for my customers: They can buy better products and pay less.

This post is out of the ordinary. The probability that Software AG will Survive is now higher than it was when I wrote the post: Will Software AG Survive until 2019? 
  

Software AG's Business Lines

In my previous Vendors Survival post on Software AG, I analyzed its two major Business Lines:

1. Mainframe DataBase, Development and Integration products

2. BPM and SOA products

I will repeat only the main point:
Software AG's Mainframe Business Line is gradually and slowly declining.

If another vendor will acquire Software AG, it will acquire it because of the BPM and SOA Business Line.  

Positive Indicators
A company could be an Acquisition Target but it also could vanish due to inability to compete.

It looks like Software AG is not a potential failing or vanishing company. 

It is a big, solid and stable company.
The following indicators support my view:

 1. Software AG has more than 5,400 employees in 70 countries that serve 70 percent of the Global 1,000. (The information is updated to the end of 2012). 


2. 1,047.3 million USDs revenues in 2012 


3. Consistent revenues and earnings

4. According to the WikiPedia: "The company is the second largest Software vendor in Germany and the fourth in Europe and among the top 25 globally". 

Transformation is the Name of the Game

In order to Survive and/or grow the company's difficult task is to transform itself from a Mainframe Software Vendor to Multi-Platform BPM and SOA Vendor.

There are two challenges types:  

type 1: The Mainframe Software Business and Business models are unique
The Mainframe software uniqueness is hilighted in the following bullets:

1. A limited number of customers and potential customers

2. The Customers Are Large Enterprises 

Each customer buys for larger sums in comparison to Open Systems customes

3. Higher prices than prices in other software platforms

The minimal Software Products prices are tens of thousands USDs. Usually DBMS's prices, such as Software AG's flagship product ADABAS, are hundred thousands USDs.

4. The Software prices are based on Site Licenses or on Computer models Groups. Larger Mainframes (more CPU MIPS) Groups prices are higher. Usually Capacity grows and new Mainframes with larger Capacity are included in larger Software Groups. The result is higher Software Products prices. 

5. A limited number of competitors. The main competition is IBM with its DB2 database and COBOL and Java programming languages. CA is another important competitor.

6. A very limited number of new potential customers. Migration to Mainframe is unusual. There are few new Mainframe sites.  

type 2: Competition in the BPM and SOA Markets 

In a Press Release Software AG wrote: "Software AG's  strategy has been strongly focused on growth in the Business Process Excellence (BPE) business line since 2012. AS a consequence, the company heavily invested in new products and the expansion of its sales teams." 

The Business Process Management (BPM) market is a lot different. The following bullets highlights the BPM market:

Growing. 

The BPM market is growing rapidly. The annual growth rate of Leaders could be two digits growth rate.  

Immature. 

Read my post: BPMS Next Generation: IBPMS and you will understand. It is a market that from time to time a new Use Case shakes the market. This time it was Intelligent Business Operation (IBO). Software AG was one of the Vendors, which were moved from Gartner Magic Quadrant Leaders Square (BPMS Magic Quadrant) to the Visionary Square in the IBPMS Magic Quadrant. Software AG was not alone: only three Vendors appear in the Leaders Square of IBPMS. Previous Use Cases added and changed vendors position, were Case Management and Human Processes.    

Crowded.

In 2013, Forrester Research identified 52 different vendors competing in the BPM broader market (The Forrester Wave: BPM Suites , Q1 2013). Compare 52 to 2 (The significant competitors in the Mainframe DBMS market).

Acquisitions. 

No wonder that Large Vendors acquire smaller vendors in a crowded market. BPM is not an exception. For example, IBM acquired Lombardi and FileNet. Software AG acquired WebMethods and IDS Scheer and Aurea Software acquired Progress Savvion. 

Competition. 

The competitors include Mega Vendors (IBM, Oracle), Pure BPM companies (Appian, PegaSystems) and Integration Vendors (Tibco, Vitria). I named only few strong competitors. Each of them has its Advantages (as well as Considerations) over other competitors, including Software AG.  

Evaluating Software AG's Transformation
As stated in the title of the previous paragraph: "Transformation is the Name of the Game". In the following sections I would try to evaluate Software AG's Transformation efforts.

Business Lines Contributions to Revenues
Software AG's revenues for 2012 were 1,047 Million USDs. The three major Business Lines contributions were:

Business Process Excellence 547 Million (52%)

Enterprise Transactions 375.2 Million (36%)

IDS Scheer Consulting 125.1 Million (12%)

The raw data was retrieved from Software AG's Annual Report 2012.  I calculated the percentages.

Roughly, Business Process Excellence is BPM including  SOA. 

Roughly, Enterprise Transactions is Mainframe and Database, Development and Integration.
The ADABAS D and Natural business on other platforms is not significant.  

Roughly, IDS Scheer Consulting is Business Process Analysis (BPA). BPA is a part of the BPM Life Cycle, so IDS Scheer Consulting is included in the BPM and SOA Business.

Conclusion: in 2012, BPM and SOA Business Lines revenues are more than 60% of Software AG's revenues. Mainframe revenues are more than 30%. 


The Bottom Line: Software AG transformation from Mainframe Software company to BPM and SOA company was successful. It still has significant but gradually and slowly declining revenues from its Mainframe Business Line.

Acquisitions
Acquisitions are complex you have to chose a suitable Acquisition Target and you have to execute the complex merging process. The complexity includes  Organizational issues, Organizational Culture differences and Technological issues.

The wrong acquisition of Compaq by HP, many years ago, still hurts HP business.

You can also read my post: Acquisition is not simple: SAP-Sybase acquisition agreement, in order to understand the issues facing a company acquiring another company.

WebMethods acquisition was the first significant Software AG's acquisition. It looks like a plausible acquisition, because WebMethods was a Leader in the BPM, SOA and Integration markets.
Software AG branded its SOA and BPM suite as WebMethods and kept key WebMethods employees.

IDS Scheer was the second significant acquisition. A German company (Software AG.) acquired another German company (IDS Scheer). IDS Sceer's ARIS is a leading BPA product especially for ERP suites. 

In order to improve its position in the new Intelligent Business Operation Use Case, Software AG acquired two companies:
Jackbe provider of Mashups and Real Time Business Intelligence platform and Apama a Complex Event Processing company. I already discussed these acquisitions in my post: IBPMS: BPMS Leader Software AG attempting to lead in IBPMS.  

Bottom Line: Reasonable acquisitions and adequate merge execution.

Technology
WebMethod and Software AG products overlap: both companies had SOA products. However, Software AG did not develop a BPM solutions. The decision was to base the suite on WebMethods products. 
Software AG's leading SOA Registry and Governance product: Centrasite (co developed with Fujitsu before WebMethods acquisition), is the Registry used in WebMethods suite.  
After IDS Scheer Acquisition, its BPA products replaced WebMethods solutions. 

The two BPM suites (WebMethods and IDS Scheer) were not integrated to a single suite, but tied the environments together. The quality of the mechanism of using artifacts from one environment in the other environment is good.

The Bottom Line:The technological decisions and implementations are reasonable. 

Implementing BPM 
In a previous post, I explained why SOA is implemented by more enterprises than BPM. 
Few years ago, more than 50% of enterprises adopted SOA according to surveys results.
According to Forrester's survey results, only 26% implemented or expanding Business Process Management tools in 4thQ 2012. 

According to The Forrester Wave: BPM Suites , Q1 2013, "Best Practices dictates that to get a good return on your BPM investment means scaling from project to program."   

Program includes many Projects, is more strategic and more tightly coupled to Business.

SOA is not a Project it is a Program (or Initiative or a Journey). You may find positive correlation between SOA as a Project and failure in implementing it or not achieving enough Value for justifying the SOA effort.

Starting SOA or BPM by a project addressing a Pain Point is a good practice, however afterwards you should build a Program and not execute isolated and uncorrelated projects.

The main difference between SOA and BPM is the approach. SOA Program could be relatively slow and gradual. According to Best Practices, in BPM Program execution, shortening the time is more important than reducing costs.

The reason is that benefits could be realized quickly when the lack of Process Visibility is replaced by Process Visibility inherent in BPM.

As BPM will mature expect more BPM Programs.

According to Forrester Software AG major strength is  "Software AG strikes good balance between project and program". 
If other vendors will not catch up in "good balance between project and program", Software AG Market position could be improved.  
  
My Take
Software AG's long transformation from Mainframe Software company to Business Process Management and Service Oriented Architecture was successful.

The largest Business Line in terms of revenues is BPM and SOA.

The company positioning in the crowded BPM market is good.

The Mainframe Software Business Line is declining slowly. Rapid decline could reduce the revenues significantly. 

The company is one of the top 25 global software companies i.e only Mega Vendors can afford to acquire it.

The combination of all the factors cited in this paragraph is higher Survival probability in comparison to 2009.   

However, inadequate strategy or inadequate execution could hurt its stability and profitability and reduce its survival probability. 

It should be remembered, that even if Software AG will be as successful as it was in the last years, that does not guarantee that it will not be acquired. 

Mega Vendor could acquire it. As long as the Mainframe Business Line is viable, it is unlikely that a Mega Vendor will do this. 

For the Long Term, it is a possible scenario. If Software AG will become an Acquisition Target, I guess that the potential acquirer will probably be SAP.