Try our new research platform with insights from 80,000+ expert users

BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench vs Bonita comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary
 

Categories and Ranking

BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench
Average Rating
7.2
Number of Reviews
7
Ranking in other categories
Mainframe Application Development (1st)
Bonita
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (11th), Business Process Management (BPM) (13th), Process Automation (11th)
 

Mindshare comparison

BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench and Bonita aren’t in the same category and serve different purposes. BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench is designed for Mainframe Application Development and holds a mindshare of 29.3%, up 24.3% compared to last year.
Bonita, on the other hand, focuses on Business Process Management (BPM), holds 3.5% mindshare, up 3.1% since last year.
Mainframe Application Development
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

JS
Oct 8, 2018
File editing/browsing and the debugging features help onboard developers who are new to the mainframe environment
Initially, it was fairly complicated. Topaz leverages the functionality from other products quite a bit, and the setup issues were attributed to those other products: things that we didn't have in place, we didn't have installed, we didn't have configured. I spent a lot of time going through the features of Topaz that were not working, trying to find which product it was that was missing a configuration step or a setup step. That took me the better part of six to eight months to get it all ironed out. It was fairly complicated to get all of the features and functions working. As far as Topaz itself goes, they're just built-in and expected to work, but as I said, those features are really attributed to other products, the setup and configuration that's required for those products. But since we've gone through those initial setups, doing upgrades and doing maintenance has been really straightforward. There has really not been a lot to do in the configuration and setup portions.
Paparao Nadipineni - PeerSpot reviewer
Sep 18, 2023
A simple and lightweight college course automation system with third-party integrations
Bonita is a college course automation system. Some students may fall behind in their curriculum, but if they drop out, we will accept dropout students’ requests and consider the quests. We then ensure that the course is completed on time Bonita is simple and lightweight and is flexible to…

Quotes from Members

We asked business professionals to review the solutions they use. Here are some excerpts of what they said:
 

Pros

"It helps our staff work by speeding up their documentation process."
"The most valuable feature of Topaz is Xpediter. It's more flexible than Xpediter through MVS."
"The smart editor helps because it will code-complete for me. I can see code working a lot faster and I'm able to get things coded in less time."
"It's a modernized development portal and helps reduce the learning curve for younger people coming in to work on the platform,"
"Once we got the configurations and deployment rolled out, it was very stable. I haven't had any major issues with Eclipse or the Topaz Workbench plugins."
"From a user perspective, the GUIs make it easier for people to see and interact with files on the mainframe."
"We can develop in parallel today on ISPF, but it's giving us the advantage of the newer interface into the mainframe programming languages that younger programmers can use and are familiar with, rather than using the ISPF green screen."
"The user interface is easy to use."
"Flexible and drag-and-drop type of UI is very valuable. The integrations are also very good. You can build workflows very quickly, which is my favorite activity. By using the GUI, you can build the entire mechanism, notifications, and all this kind of stuff."
"Bonita is user-friendly."
"Its user-friendliness, along with the availability of comprehensive and clear documentation on the website is the most valuable."
"Development of forms and flows."
"The solution is stable. Even the older versions are stable."
"The solution is easy to use."
"Compared to other products on the market, Bonita presents a pretty acceptable level of robustness."
 

Cons

"It would be nice to have an audit trail to see what mainframe developers are using what."
"It would be good if the vendors would work together or at least have some collaboration between them, so they would know what would work and what wouldn't work. Right now, the way things are working, they're relying on the customer to make everything work."
"The ability to edit source code that has special characters is limited. The ability to incorporate or convert REXX into macros that are usable under the Topaz software is not there. And the REXX macros that I have developed over 40 years of work are useless, so I have a toolbox I can't use or deploy using the Topaz technology, while I can use it under MVS."
"I'm waiting to see what 19.2 for Topaz looks like, but I have a problem with the JES Explorer right now. It limits you to a certain prefix for job names and there are some groups that have multiple prefixes that they'd like to see all at once in their job names, because of how they work in a group. And they can't see that in the JES Explorer."
"It's not as intuitive as it should be. In terms of navigation, there is a large training curve for using it. For a millennial it might be better, if they're used to Eclipse. But coming from a non-Eclipse environment and using Eclipse, though I have experience with Eclipse, it might be cumbersome."
"I'm always looking for improvement in things like the documentation, to make things a little bit easier and simpler to understand, a place where people can go to troubleshoot issues."
"It often doesn't play well with other plugins in the environment."
"The area for improvement is related to the testing tools that are available for unit testing or acceptance testing. I know they have some out there that we are not licensed for at this time, but it seems like some of the Eclipse tools that are used for other programming languages, they're all just built-in and they're a little more intuitive to the developers. Making those testing tools as intuitive as possible, and as integrated as possible into the workbench, would be really beneficial."
"Bonita can improve by offering more flexibility. The developer does not receive the code of the application to modify it. Most of the other solutions I have used allow the developers to change or improve the code that is generated."
"The main issue with Bonita is that the workspace crashes sometimes."
"Automation in vacation of a human resources replacement would be a good improvement in the product."
"I would like to improve the product's load balancing."
"Bonita must add a rule engine. We are a 360-degree partner of Bonita. We can integrate with any kind of rule engine. We have a dashboard related to engine performance, but getting a configurable dashboard for the Buildium or transactional data will add value."
"There is a considerable learning curve."
"Installation could be made easier."
"It would be nice to have a wizard to help walk through the development process and create a backbone."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"It has saved our developers time and effort when working on documentation, which is now more readable and fluent."
"In general, Compuware tools are very competitive."
"The only thing I would mention related to the licensing and/or the pricing, is that they have some visualization features in there that are licensed by concurrent users. We're starting to trip up on that. We're looking to probably increase the number of concurrent licenses that we have. But those types of licensing strategies, where they license by concurrent users or the number of seats is confusing for some people. They don't understand why it works sometimes and doesn't work other times."
"In terms of pricing, there isn't an extra charge for the parts of it we use. It comes with the licenses we purchased for other products, so no complaints there. The licensing is built in with the other products that you purchase from Compuware."
"Licensing cost for the Enterprise edition comes out to be around 40,000 a year. There is also a Community edition, which is free. Some customers can go for the Community edition, but some of them require the Enterprise edition. Big companies go for the Enterprise edition, which comes with a lot of additional features such as a mobile app."
"I believe this is a very good financial choice."
"I am using the free version of Bonita."
"The product is not cheaper, not costlier; it is reasonable. Bonita’s license is very flexible, with options to meet the needs of different customers and clients. Previously, it was less flexible, but now, many different licensing options are available."
"The Enterprise edition is very expensive."
"have installed the image of Bonita BPM on Amazon AWS and there is just one option to use and pay for."
"We are using the Community Version, which can be used free of charge."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
report
Use our free recommendation engine to learn which Mainframe Application Development solutions are best for your needs.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
31%
Insurance Company
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Healthcare Company
7%
Computer Software Company
15%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
8%
Government
8%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

Ask a question
Earn 20 points
How does Bonita compare with Camunda Platform?
One of the things we like best about Bonita is that you can create without coding - it is a low-code platform. With Bonita, you can build the entire mechanism using the GUI, it’s that simple. You c...
What do you like most about Bonita?
The user interface is easy to use.
 

Also Known As

No data available
Bonita BPM
 

Learn More

 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

Erste Group
With more than 1000 customers in 75 countries, and its ecosystem of more than 120,000 members, Bonitasoft is the largest provider of open-source Business Process Management, Low-code and Digital Transformation software worldwide.
Find out what your peers are saying about BMC, IBM, Broadcom and others in Mainframe Application Development. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.