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Camunda vs IBM BPM comparison

 

Comparison Buyer's Guide

Executive SummaryUpdated on Nov 24, 2024
 

Categories and Ranking

Camunda
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
1st
Ranking in Process Automation
1st
Average Rating
8.2
Reviews Sentiment
6.9
Number of Reviews
76
Ranking in other categories
Business Process Design (2nd)
IBM BPM
Ranking in Business Process Management (BPM)
8th
Ranking in Process Automation
5th
Average Rating
7.8
Reviews Sentiment
6.7
Number of Reviews
109
Ranking in other categories
Application Infrastructure (7th)
 

Mindshare comparison

As of December 2024, in the Business Process Management (BPM) category, the mindshare of Camunda is 22.1%, up from 21.2% compared to the previous year. The mindshare of IBM BPM is 7.6%, down from 7.7% compared to the previous year. It is calculated based on PeerSpot user engagement data.
Business Process Management (BPM)
 

Q&A Highlights

 

Featured Reviews

Peter Broucke - PeerSpot reviewer
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.
Mohammed Almalki - PeerSpot reviewer
Offers good case management and its integration with process design but there's a learning curve
If you're already an IBM shop with the necessary skills and personnel, then I would recommend using it. However, it requires a yearly investment. So, if you're prepared for that, then go for it. New users will need at least six months to get comfortable with IBM BPM, at least initially. So, there's a learning curve. Overall, I would rate the solution a seven out of ten. Two main reasons: the skillset required to manage it and its integration complexity.

Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"We can easily define and deploy business processes. Camunda provides the tools that allow business people to design business processes. We don't have to have developers for it. It is so easy to use that our business people can go into the tool and model their business processes. We get time to do other things than just designing business processes."
"The most valuable feature is that, with a visual system, you can try to have a process client before beginning the programming for the application."
"It is an absolutely stable solution."
"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."
"The solution is good for data models."
"We can share, discuss, and develop the model together — from a distance. It's really helped us during these times of isolation."
"Being able to use a Java-based solution makes the product flexible."
"It is transparent to business users because it is mostly picture based modelling."
"Setting it up is fairly easy. If somebody has knowledge of the system, he or she will be able to do it fairly quickly."
"We have automated processes with IBM BPM and DocuSign. Its valuable features include low-code, timer, etc. It makes it simple to implement the products. We generate reports using the solution."
"It continues to keep up with the changing needs of the business. That is the strong value proposition of BPM. It's not a one-time automation."
"This solution has always been lacking in the user interface (UI), it needed to be improved a lot. However, from the acquisition of Spark UI, the UI is much better. Overall the solution is robust and has the ability to integrate with any product for complex workflows."
"Everything is coupled together and comes as one solution."
"The most valuable feature of IBM BPM is the low code design, and ease of maintenance. Additionally, the integration is good and easy to do."
"The case management and its integration with process design are good features."
 

Cons

"Probably one area I look forward to has to do with AI and how Camunda sees the AI angle on workflow."
"When trying to design rule tables the solutions graphical user interface could improve, it could be more user friendly."
"Collaborations and process documentation in Camunda Platform are areas with shortcomings that need improvement."
"Customization and tech stack could be up-to-date."
"The initial set up could be simplified, it's complex."
"Camunda Platform's customer support could be improved because their response is quite slow."
"They have a migration plugin that can be used to migrate from one BPM to another BPM. It is in the beta stage since last year. If they can make it available in the market, it would be great. We are going to have a couple of migration projects for migrating from IBM BPM to Camunda, and this plugin would be useful. I have already discussed this with them two weeks ago and asked them to look into this and add it as a feature. We are expecting this plugin to be available in the next version. This is the only requirement we have at present. They keep on coming up with different features, which is helping us a lot. Its latest release that came out last month was awesome."
"I have faced problems in bringing up the Cockpit in terms of GUI processes. I think that there is room for improvement in those areas."
"We had a weird problem that whenever the database would go down, even for a few seconds, it broke the connection. It would not come back up as it was supposed to. However, working with IBM, we were able to figure out a fix, then it came back up, even after an interruption of the database."
"We would like better performance and more ​visibility on each step of the tool.​"
"We thought there might have been a little more discussion early on about, "Hey, if you're doing this, set it up this way," or some best practices or some guidance that we didn't get."
"The initial setup can be tricky because IBM BPM is not based on a popular stack, and it's difficult to hire a developer for this product."
"IBM BPM uses JavaScript as a programming language for the server-side. I don’t know why it’s not Java, as it’s more powerful and the JavaScript part is translated into Java anyway."
"One of the things that we are looking at is cognitive learning. IBM has another product called IBM RPA, I think, which is doing some of that stuff. We would like to see more of that with respect to cognitive learning and AI put back into the process engine to help."
"They could provide case studies to investigate and understand the functionality of business processes before development."
"IBM BPM can improve the dashboards and reports. It only has two dashboards, and reporting is very difficult to build."
 

Pricing and Cost Advice

"We are using the open-source version, free of charge. We didn't bother with the enterprise features."
"We are using the open-source version of this solution."
"We're using the open-source version for now."
"The price of the solution is reasonable."
"Cheaper licensing and resources than competitors"
"The license is quite expensive, which is why we went with the community version."
"We're using the free version. We used the Enterprise version for some time. If I compare free versus what we paid at that time, the Enterprise version costs a lot. For the additional functionality that we got with the Enterprise version, it was too costly."
"There were some features that were only available in the paid version."
"It may be cheaper for organizations to pay for the Viewer licenses that are immediately up and running in the cloud, rather than paying for someone to administer publishing to an intranet."
"The pricing is very high."
"I wish it was less expensive. I don't know why their pricing model is so high for a piece of software that could benefit so many. It just seems to me that they could have a lower cost, maybe with fewer features or whatever, but it should be possible to do a lower cost workflow software that uses the same interface and underlying engine but does not cost so much that you have to be a Fortune 50 company to buy it. It is annoying to me. There are a lot of solutions that IBM has that are really powerful but nobody can afford them. They know their business, but I still feel that there are a lot of customers who would benefit from this sort of thing. I don't know what this elitism is all about. I am sure they have people doing the money numbers, but it seems like you can make a lot more money by selling it to way more people for a little bit less."
"The price of the solution is fair for an enterprise solution that has both cloud and on-premise deployments and when comparing to competitors. Recently IBM has introduced Cloud Pak which allows for more flexible licensing options for automation and other features."
"I rate the solution's pricing a four out of ten."
"It gives us a good return on investment."
"The price is good but could be a little lower."
"On a scale of one to ten, where one is cheap, and ten is expensive, I rate the pricing a ten."
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Answers from the Community

LC
Aug 24, 2021
Aug 24, 2021
Hi Leandro, those two BPM's shouldn't be compared on the functional level. They are different type of solutions. Camunda offers the workflow engine and decission engine, where you can create process models according to BPMN and DMM standards. This gives you the flexibility and agility in the process management. It also gives you the tools to monitor, manage and optimize those processes. Camund...
2 out of 3 answers
BA
Feb 13, 2021
PM
Feb 15, 2021
Hi Leandro, those two BPM's shouldn't be compared on the functional level. They are different type of solutions.  Camunda offers the workflow engine and decission engine, where you can create process models according to BPMN and DMM standards. This gives you the flexibility and agility in the process management. It also gives you the tools to monitor, manage and optimize those processes. Camunda provides very limited functionalities, if it comes to end user interfaces. Usually they are built as custom applications or existing application are used. With Camunda projects you always focus on automation, that requires system integration and custom development and usually concerns core business processes. Camunda is an openAPI solution, which makes the integration fast and easy. It is a common situation in financial industry, that you have many systems, that need to be integrated in one process, that is why Camunda is so popular in this sector.Before you decide on the switch, you have to consider the processes you want to use it for. If this is for standard processes like holiday requests, invoice approvals etc. Camunda is not the best option. But if you want to automate sales or after sales processes, client/partner onboarding, claims management, debt collection you should definitely consider Camunda. I found once in Camunda documents an interesting comparison between Camunda and BPM suites: "On a blank canvas, an artist can paint a picture in exactly the way he imagines. Alternatively, there is the principle of “painting by numbers”, where even the artistic layman can create stunning images by coloring in predetermined areas. However, they can only create what was already pre-designed." And finally, Camunda is available as open source solution and there is no vendor lock. I hope it helped ;-) There is always an option to have a talk... Cheers, Piotr
 

Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews
Financial Services Firm
27%
Computer Software Company
14%
Manufacturing Company
6%
Government
6%
Financial Services Firm
31%
Computer Software Company
12%
Manufacturing Company
7%
Government
6%
 

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...
Which is better, IBM BPM or IBM Business Automation Workflow?
We researched both IBM solutions and in the end, we chose Business Automation Workflow. IBM BPM has a good user interface and the BPM coach is a helpful tool. The API is very useful in providing en...
 

Comparisons

 

Also Known As

Camunda BPM
WebSphere Lombardi Edition, IBM Business Process Manager, IBM WebSphere Process Server
 

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
Barclays, EmeriCon, Banca Popolare di Milano, CST Consulting, KeyBank, KPMG, Prolifics, Sandhata Technologies Ltd., State of Alaska, Humana S.A., Saperion, esciris, Banco Espirito Santo
Find out what your peers are saying about Camunda vs. IBM BPM and other solutions. Updated: December 2024.
823,795 professionals have used our research since 2012.