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BMC Compuware Topaz Workbench vs Bonita comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive Summary

Review summaries and opinions

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

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
Reviews Sentiment
7.0
Number of Reviews
27
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (10th), Business Process Management (BPM) (14th), Process Automation (12th)
 

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 28.8%, up 27.5% compared to last year.
Bonita, on the other hand, focuses on Business Process Management (BPM), holds 3.7% mindshare, up 2.9% since last year.
Mainframe Application Development
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Featured Reviews

JE
It helps our staff work by speeding up their documentation process, but it often doesn't play well with other plugins in the environment.
I would look for more cooperation between the vendors and using Eclipse the way Eclipse is meant to be used. Topaz Workbench often doesn't play well with other plugins in the environment. 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. I would like to see the features include more integration or help customers when working with Jenkins. It would be nice to have an audit trail to see what mainframe developers are using what. We are trying to get more people to use the product at the moment. I would like to expand its usage because it is a good product for development.
Paparao Nadipineni - PeerSpot reviewer
A simple and lightweight college course automation system with third-party integrations
The initial setup is straightforward and can be completed with the environment within an hour. First, take the latest from the git repository and check the git code to the monitor studio and a bar file, a deployable Bonita archive file. Then, take that process to the Bonita server, running at runtime on another server. Finally, deploy and enable it by selecting the proper organization.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"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."
"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."
"From a user perspective, the GUIs make it easier for people to see and interact with files on the mainframe."
"It helps our staff work by speeding up their documentation process."
"It's a modernized development portal and helps reduce the learning curve for younger people coming in to work on the platform,"
"The most valuable feature of Topaz is Xpediter. It's more flexible than Xpediter through MVS."
"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 solution is stable. Even the older versions are stable."
"I find process management and user interface designing the most valuable features."
"The user interface is easy to use."
"Bonita is simple and lightweight and is flexible to integrate with third-party systems. The UI is now flexible, whereas it was previously rigid. Any technology can be used as a frontend, including ReactJS, Angular, and others."
"The user interface is better than all of the open-source BPMs that I have tried."
"Compared to other products on the market, Bonita presents a pretty acceptable level of robustness."
"Development of forms and flows."
"This product is very easy-to-use and user-friendly."
 

Cons

"It often doesn't play well with other plugins in the environment."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"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."
"Automation in vacation of a human resources replacement would be a good improvement in the product."
"The main issue with Bonita is that the workspace crashes sometimes."
"I should be able to park the tasks that are within a process in a kind of container, and dynamically, a super admin should be able to connect these processes. This kind of feature might be helpful."
"We are struggling a bit with integrations."
"The interface is advanced and quite good, but it could improve."
"I have run into a lot of problems because there is not enough documentation."
"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."
"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."
 

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."
"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."
"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."
"We are using the Community Version, which can be used free of charge."
"The product's pricing is acceptable. Pricing is yearly."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"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."
"You pay an annual fee and can have an unlimited number of processes and users."
"The Community Edition comes free of charge."
"I am using the free version of Bonita."
"have installed the image of Bonita BPM on Amazon AWS and there is just one option to use and pay for."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
33%
Insurance Company
18%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
7%
Computer Software Company
16%
Financial Services Firm
12%
Educational Organization
9%
Manufacturing Company
7%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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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
 

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: March 2025.
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