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Camunda vs IBM Blueworks Live comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 3, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Camunda
Ranking in Business Process Design
2nd
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
75
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Management (BPM) (1st), Process Automation (1st)
IBM Blueworks Live
Ranking in Business Process Design
12th
Average Rating
8.2
Number of Reviews
20
Ranking in other categories
No ranking in other categories
 

Mindshare comparison

As of November 2024, in the Business Process Design category, the mindshare of Camunda is 11.6%, up from 10.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM Blueworks Live is 3.5%, up from 3.1% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Design
 

Featured Reviews

Peter Broucke - PeerSpot reviewer
Apr 23, 2024
Support is good (even the basic one), documentation is readily available and matches the need for agile development
Probably one area I look forward to has to do with AI and how Camunda sees the AI angle on workflow. I know they're working on that or at least communicating about it. They already have versions to run on the cloud, so they've tackled that. We're looking at what they will come up with otherwise. As long as the product gets enough traction and evolves, we're happy. With open source, you can monitor what's happening. If the product is being left by many customers, that's a sign. We're also users of Camunda, and you can watch one of our guides' presentations in the States about one of our implementations. Our focus now is on developing service management and DMN APIs for the platform. AI is something we take into consideration, but we'll see what additional benefits it could bring and how to interconnect it with our data or AI engineering.
AjarMathur - PeerSpot reviewer
Jul 5, 2023
An easily scalable and affordable solution that enables users to document and digitize processes with ease
IBM Blueworks is BPMN 2.0 compliant, but it does not adapt to the overarching BPMN 2.0 concepts. There is only one kind of BPMN 2.0 diagram. It is a process diagram. It doesn't have the concept of separate tools, which other products offer. If I had to do a hardcore BPMN 2.0 modeling, the product would have its own reservations. There were features we could not explore from a BPMN 2.0 perspective. Most of the time, people who are shifting from Microsoft Office tools to a digitized way of working still want the reporting capabilities to be strong. Some tools, like ARIS or Signavio, offer customized solutions from the reporting perspective. If I have documented my whole finance process and want to fetch out a complete SOP report in a very customized manner, IBM Blueworks cannot provide it. We have to rely on some other services. So that's one area in which we always struggled, how to really customize the reporting aspects. I understand that we need to keep the tool a little more asset-light. It's very difficult to keep adding many options, but at least a few BPMN 2.0 options were needed. We have been suggesting to IBM that we should have some way of customizing the reporting. At least we should get a custom way of reporting it into different formats like Excel or putting up a logo for one of the clients so that their SAP can be printed that way.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"It is open-source. It supports microservice orchestration. This is what we are really interested in. We can customize our products depending on the use cases."
"Having knowledge of the BPM and monitoring process has proven to be very beneficial, as I am currently engaged in documenting processes for Clientele."
"We have a lot of users, almost 1,800, and we needed something affordable, stable and something that could be used by a large financial company. This solution truly fit the bill."
"It's user friendly, much better than most tools I have seen."
"The product is stable."
"The ease with which I can define workflows is most valuable. The latest updates and flexibility that it provides around a task activity are interesting for me."
"It has been a stable solution so far since it meets our needs, including data modeling, which we need to do before we embark on analyzing and optimizing the business processes."
"The solution is useful for small projects."
"I like the two-tiered approach, that is, discover and then drill down to the main steps. You can right click and attach risk, policies, and much more. It is a user-friendly solution."
"Collaboration is most valuable. You can collaborate online with many people. People can comment, and you can comment back. It is just like a social network, and that, for me, is very good."
"For me, what I find to be the most valuable is its simplicity and the association with Microsoft Office."
"You can use if from your mobile device or you can be on the desktop. It doesn't matter. You are always connected. It is cloud-based, so you don't have to install anything."
"It has the ability to document in different formats. It is not tied to a specific model. You can look at it from different angles and see the intuitive nature of it. It always generates a valid diagram. You cannot create something that is not BPMN compliant."
"We are you using the product as a process mapping tool and as part of a larger process improvement project. We use it with IBM BPM and IBM ODM. We get an automated workflow solution for our customers, an improved workflow automation."
"This solution is good at utilizing standards rules for connectivity."
"It enables decisions based upon processes that we do model, and ultimately move forward with."
 

Cons

"Collaborations and process documentation in Camunda Platform are areas with shortcomings that need improvement."
"It is not difficult to change existing processes. The difficulty was in integration, for example, to call an external web API, and in the security capabilities, to use a vault for secrets. That was difficult."
"I would like to see better pricing."
"The product's initial setup phase is difficult for beginners."
"It's costly and not accessible for small enterprises or startups. It would be great if Camunda offered a tier plan for smaller companies."
"If there were some industry templates it would have helped significantly, because it is similar to a process map for a domain. That is what we are currently creating, a domain-relevant process map."
"Would be helpful if there were additional out-of-the-box activities."
"If they could build some scripts or some configuration to get it up and running in a Docker environment, that would be good. I didn't find anything when on Docker, however, maybe they have something and I didn't see it yet."
"The objects that the solution creates are not unique."
"I would like to see integration with ERP systems. This would help us to simulate the process and see where the problems are. Though IBM Blueworks Live is a good tool for documenting, it is not good for simulating."
"Some of the import functionality was a bit restrictive, in terms of loading data in from other data sources. Something as simple as Excel, loading data tables from Excel, wasn't great. And vice-versa. Some of the export and import functionality with something like Visio - which, I know it's a slightly different tool - but being able to work seamlessly with those other tool sets would've been quite useful. I know it was something that was in the pipeline to be looked at. So that would be useful."
"The user interface is quite easy at first but process analysts soon run into roadblocks of limited functionality, which is disappointing."
"I wish Blueworks Live had simulations built in, but it doesn't. It also lacks a feature of reporting; ad hoc, drag and drop reporting. A lot of senior people are always asking for reports, and there's no reporting feature within IBM Blueworks."
"It is BPMN-compliant but the tool needs to be more involved to get into a completely 2.0 oriented tool. It has a few things but it's not the complete BPMN model."
"Sometimes, the tool is automatic, which can complicate it, but once you're accustomed to manipulating it, you can use it very effectively."
"The font size is really, really small and it's really not useful to print out process models because you cannot read what's written in different boxes. This makes it necessary for people to have access to the tool. We view licenses to see how the printing or output is. It's not very good."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"Its price is decent. Everything is included in the license. The Community version is also good to start with. We are using the Community version."
"Licensing costs are anywhere from $80,000 to $100,000 USD per year."
"When compared with the proprietary products, the pricing costs are much less, even though it is an enterprise edition."
"We are using the community version. There is no licensing cost."
"There is a bit of scope for improvement in how the licensing and pricing are done. They are based on the number of processing instances you execute on the cluster... but on the self-hosted mode, the pricing model should be customized."
"We're using the open-source version for now."
"We are using the open-source version, free of charge. We didn't bother with the enterprise features."
"We use the free version."
"They have a free subscription model that gives a lot of power to the users."
"The solution is not very expensive."
"Making it less expensive would be good."
"Based on the licenses purchased, from a footprint perspective, you can have as many people as you want. You have multiple different categories of licenses to keep the cost low."
"There are editor licenses that are around 50 euros per month, and contributor licenses that are around 30 euros per month."
"The solution is very, very cost-effective."
"We are seeing ROI from this solution. The solution has saved us time."
"Price wise, IBM Blueworks Live is in the middle range, and I would give it a five out of ten."
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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
19%
Manufacturing Company
10%
Computer Software Company
10%
Government
9%
 

Company Size

By reviewers
Large Enterprise
Midsize Enterprise
Small Business
 

Questions from the Community

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...
Which do you prefer - Appian or Camunda Platform?
Appian is fast when building simple to medium solutions. This solution offers simple drag-and-drop functionality with easy plug-and-play options. The initial setup was seamless and very easy to imp...
Which would you choose - Camunda Platform or Apache Airflow?
Camunda Platform allows for visual demonstration and presentation of business process flows. The flexible Java-based option was a big win for us and allows for the integration of microservices very...
What do you like most about IBM Blueworks Live?
The solution is easy to operate. Also, there is an automatic mode to make the business flow. You don't have to put any lines or arrows in a decision point in IBM Blueworks Live; it's very automatic.
What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Blueworks Live?
The solution costs around 600-700 dollars/year, which is quite affordable.
What needs improvement with IBM Blueworks Live?
Sometimes, the tool is automatic, which can complicate it, but once you're accustomed to manipulating it, you can use it very effectively.
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Camunda BPM
IBM Lombardi Blueprint
 

Learn More

Video not available
 

Overview

 

Sample Customers

24 Hour Fitness, Accruent, AT&T Inc., Atlassian, CSS Insurance, Deutsche Telekom, Generali, Provinzial NordWest Insurance Services, Swisscom AG, U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs, VHV Group, Zalando
Cloudsoft Corp. Ltd., Bayer, S¾SS, Essex County Council
Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda vs. IBM Blueworks Live and other solutions. Updated: October 2024.
814,649 professionals have used our research since 2012.