In my view, a drum machine can not replace a drummer. At best, a drum machine can be used as a metronome in the absence of a drummer.
That being said, in my band (www.vi.be/bandwerk ) we use a Beatbuddy drum machine as our drummer, also live. This works fine because our songs are written -from the start- with the Beatbuddy as drummer.
We are a rock band but because of the nature of the Beatbuddy, we also sound a bit like a new wave band (which is fine for us).