IBM Cloud Pak for Automation vs Temporal comparison

IBM and Temporal Technologies are both solutions in the Process Automation category. IBM is ranked #21 with an average rating of 9.0, while Temporal Technologies is ranked #7 with an average rating of 8.6. Additionally, 100% of IBM users are willing to recommend the solution, compared to 94% of Temporal Technologies users who would recommend it.

IBM Cloud Pak for Automation

Read 2 IBM Cloud Pak for Automation reviews

261 Views
150 Comparison Views

100% willing to recommend

Temporal

Read 17 Temporal reviews

1,417 Views
1,108 Comparison Views

94% willing to recommend

IBM Cloud Pak for Automation

Temporal

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Executive SummaryUpdated on Dec 17, 2024

IBM Cloud Pak for Automation and Temporal are competitors in the realm of business process automation. Temporal seems to have an edge due to its superior features and flexibility.

Features: IBM Cloud Pak for Automation features integrated artificial intelligence, support for complex business processes, and compliance management. Temporal is known for managing workflow state, persistent storage, and scalability. Its event-driven architecture suits modern workflows.

Ease of Deployment and Customer Service: Temporal offers straightforward deployment with cloud-native infrastructure and enables agile service upgrades. IBM Cloud Pak for Automation provides a guided deployment process with strong customer service and extensive documentation.

Pricing and ROI: IBM Cloud Pak for Automation is cost-effective, especially for users in the IBM ecosystem, with strong ROI and support options. Temporal, though potentially more expensive upfront, offers valuable long-term investment due to advanced features and efficiency, suggesting higher ROI in dynamic settings.

To learn more, read our detailed IBM Cloud Pak for Automation vs. Temporal Report (Updated: April 2025).

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Automation vs. Temporal

April 2025

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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

IBM Cloud Pak for Automation

Ranking in Process Automation

21st

Average Rating

8.0

Reviews Sentiment

5.8

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Temporal

Ranking in Process Automation

7th

Average Rating

8.6

Reviews Sentiment

7.2

Number of Reviews

Ranking in other categories

No ranking in other categories

Featured Reviews

SYEDMUJTABA

Vice President - Digital Automation Services at Techvista Systems

Effectively handles parallel instances effectively

I find it quite straightforward, perhaps around 8.5 out of 10 in terms of ease. When we upgraded from the old version of IBM BPM to the new one within IBM Cloud Pak for Automation, we didn't encounter any major issues. There were some minor ones, but they were easy to overcome.The migration process was part of our deployment strategy. We had a plan to migrate two processes per week from on-premises to the cloud. The migration involved taking the instances and migrating them to the new environment. There is an inbuilt feature in IBM Cloud Pak for Automation that facilitates the migration process, although I personally haven't conducted it myself; it's managed by my team. Overall, the setup process was relatively smooth.

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AbhishekDash

Senior Software Engineer at A.P. Moller - Maersk

Orchestrates infrastructure tasks like deployment, deletion, and management

Temporal focus on developers rather than business users. In contrast to older workflow orchestration engines like Camunda, which are more business-oriented and strongly emphasize UI and workflow authoring, Temporal is geared toward developers. It provides extensive capabilities for building complex workflows. A standout feature of Temporal is its handling of long-running workflows, a significant advantage over many other solutions. Temporal excels in managing distributed transactions and application state durability, especially in microservice environments where transactions might fail due to network issues. Temporal simplifies these challenges by managing retries, fail-safes, and circuit breakers. As a result, developers don't need to implement these features manually; Temporal handles them implicitly, though it also allows for tuning based on specific needs.

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Quotes from Members

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

Pros

"I believe two significant features of IBM Cloud Pak for Automation are the focus on SLA management and the capability to handle parallel instances effectively. Parallel instances, for instance, are valuable when dealing with a large number of users, enabling tasks to be performed concurrently for efficient system operation. The SLA aspect is crucial for tracking and ensuring timely completion of tasks. Additionally, the cloud compatibility of IBM BAW allows for seamless migration from on-premises to the cloud. This version also includes a business rule management system for storing and managing business rules effectively."

"What this product allows us to do is to move from on-prem instances where we are running independent instances of FileNet, Datacap, and ODM. It allows us to leverage container-based resiliency and availability modeling so that we have some visibility across the CP4BA ecosystem. We're now migrating all of our data to be in the Cloud Object Storage, and we can now use some of the features of Azure in terms of how we store and retrieve content for our members and our providers."

"The solution's most valuable feature is its ability to retry from an interrupted state."

"The most valuable thing about Temporal is that we can create multiple and child workflows. We can segregate work as we want, which is good for work organization. It's also easy to maintain. We're trying to generate and fill PDF forms with custom data, including digital signatures. We call AWS and do all activities through Temporal, like calling and saving data in buckets. We do this because we have a lot of load, with multiple users requesting data. We have two types of users: admin and customer. The admin creates forms, and employees or customers fill them out. When admin gets a form, it's stored in Temporal."

"The most valuable feature is its ability to manage and automate workflows without manual intervention efficiently."

"The solution's most valuable features include its ability to simplify the management of complex workflows, improve system resilience and fault tolerance, and reduce the need for extensive boilerplate code."

"It is very useful for long-running workflows."

"We like the fact that the whole process is durable, which is very useful to us."

"Temporal provides visibility into workflow progress and analytics and supports scheduled tasks with customizable settings, making it very convenient."

"Temporal focus on developers rather than business users."

More Temporal pros

Cons

"I believe there is room for improvement in the user interface, particularly in the Process Portal that customers use to view and manage their tasks. The UI of the Process Portal needs enhancement. Additionally, in the next release, I would like to see improved compatibility with Angular, allowing for direct integration with front-end systems. It would be beneficial to have built-in GUI features based on Angular within the system, rather than developing separate applications externally. This, in turn, would provide a more seamless and enhanced front-end experience."

"One of the challenges we're having is finding vendors who have experience in developing on the cloud. We can find developers on the old platform, but it is leading-edge technology. So, we are having some challenges, and IBM is assisting us to find vendor partners. To be able to leverage all the capabilities of the new platform, we have to upgrade our existing ecosystem of FileNet applications. Upgrading to the new platform while trying to modernize is always challenging because it is like you have a moving target."

"I don't like the limitations on data flow, particularly the difficulty of passing large amounts of data between different activities."

"Temporal images aren’t FIPS compliant, and we have to be FIPS compliant."

"There are areas where Temporal could improve. For instance, calling multiple microservices with Temporal introduces latency due to workflow registration and analytics overhead."

"Sometimes it scales kind of badly, but it depends on the process of our products."

"One area where I think Temporal could improve is its dashboard, particularly in event tracking. Currently, the dashboard doesn't show a time-based view of events, meaning it doesn't display when an event started or went through the retry process. If this feature could be added in a future release, it would significantly enhance monitoring capabilities. Other than that, Temporal's overall performance is quite impressive, and we're confident we can migrate to the Temporal workflow."

"We previously faced issues with the solution's patch system."

"One issue is that we don't have enough resources in the community to get answers when we face problems. We once had a cross-cluster persistence issue, which we solved using different keys. I think Temporal is good right now, but I'm part of the community and will let you know if I think of any improvements."

"While the tool can be a bit daunting initially, especially if you're not used to async programming models, it's generally a pleasure. There's always room for improvement, though. I've noticed some limitations with the .NET SDK regarding dynamic workflows, but this might have been improved in recent versions. Overall, I think Temporal could be more open about implementing features in a more—.NET-friendly way, especially in how you add workers and clients."

More Temporal cons

Pricing and Cost Advice

"IBM Cloud Pak for Automation is relatively expensive, especially considering it is designed for long-living processes, not for normal automation needs. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the pricing at around 9. There are no additional costs beyond the standard licensing fees, but IBM has multiple pricing models that make it expensive in its own way. Different plans are available, but overall, the experience suggests it is a costly solution."

"Its cost is almost the same or comparable to what we pay with FileNet, but I'm not sure what we pay a year. A good part of CP4BA is the CPU-based licensing model. When we're dealing with 50,000 dentists, for example, if we were to use Salesforce, we would be hit with the licensing of 50,000 dentists, whereas when we build out in CP4BA, it is just based on our CPU usage, not on individual licenses."

"The savings weren't as big as we initially expected, but they were pretty great from a developer's perspective."

"Temporal is a free, open-source tool."

"It is worth the price."

"The tool is open source under the MIT license, so there are no hidden fees. You can freely use everything on their GitHub and Docker images."

"Temporal is open-source and free to use, which is great. We didn't have to pay for any premium features."

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Top Industries

By visitors reading reviews

No data available

Financial Services Firm

27%

Computer Software Company

18%

Retailer

Manufacturing Company

Company Size

By reviewers

Large Enterprise

Midsize Enterprise

Small Business

No data available

Questions from the Community

What do you like most about IBM Cloud Pak for Automation?

I believe two significant features of IBM Cloud Pak for Automation are the focus on SLA management and the capability to handle parallel instances effectively. Parallel instances, for instance, ar...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for IBM Cloud Pak for Automation?

IBM Cloud Pak for Automation is relatively expensive, especially considering it is designed for long-living processes, not for normal automation needs. On a scale of one to ten, I would rate the pr...

See all answers

What needs improvement with IBM Cloud Pak for Automation?

I believe there is room for improvement in the user interface, particularly in the Process Portal that customers use to view and manage their tasks. The UI of the Process Portal needs enhancement. ...

See all answers

What is your experience regarding pricing and costs for Temporal?

Temporal OSS is expensive in infrastructure, but it brings back the reliability that companies need.

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What needs improvement with Temporal?

The actual user interface is still in its early stages. It’s very basic. Users don’t really have a complex permission model yet. Users don’t really have ways to automate things like, for example, p...

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What is your primary use case for Temporal?

We [my company] use it to run a large workload. We have a set of security scans we want to perform, and we distribute them over a full day, that’s over 24 hours. We use it to orchestrate all the st...

See all answers

Comparisons

IBM BPM vs IBM Cloud Pak for Automation

Compared 100% of the time

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Compared 50% of the time

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Compared 16% of the time

Orkes vs Temporal

Compared 13% of the time

Pega Platform vs Temporal

Compared 5% of the time

Rundeck vs Temporal

Compared 4% of the time

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Product Reports

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Process Automation

April 2025

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Buyer's Guide

Temporal

March 2025

Download Temporal product report

Overview

IBM Cloud Pak for Automation offers design, build, run, and automation services to rapidly scale your programs and fully execute and operationalize an automation strategy.

IBM

Temporal automates and manages workflows efficiently, offering resilience in distributed systems with features like retry and fault tolerance. Its capabilities in handling complex workflows and integrating with programming languages make it a valuable tool for managing diverse business logic.

Temporal excels in workflow orchestration, automating tasks across multiple platforms, and ensuring durability in asynchronous operations. It supports long-running workflows and simplifies handling distributed transactions, reducing boilerplate code. Temporal is noted for its durable execution and built-in retry policies, enhancing resilience. Despite its complexity and steep learning curve, it is valued for its integration with popular programming languages and relatively easy setup process, though it requires improvements in user-friendly features, documentation, community support, and security.

What are Temporal's key features?

Automation and Efficient Management: Automatically handles workflows without manual intervention.
Resilience and Fault Tolerance: Features built-in retry policies for increased reliability.
Integration: Supports various programming languages, easing development.
Distributed Transactions: Simplifies complex transaction handling with reduced boilerplate code.
Durable Execution: Ensures long-running workflows are reliably managed.

What benefits or ROI should users evaluate?

Scalability and Reliability: Enhances IT environments through robust workflow management.
Ease of Integration: Supports seamless multi-platform automation.
Improved Operational Efficiency: Reduces need for extensive coding, streamlining processes.
Durability and Fault Tolerance: Provides reliable asynchronous operations.

Temporal is implemented in sectors requiring robust workflow orchestration, such as managing data pipelines, API integration, and scheduling tasks. Organizations in a Kubernetes environment leverage it for its scalability and infrastructure management capabilities, securing integrations and enhancing reliability across IT operations.

Temporal Technologies

Buyer's Guide

IBM Cloud Pak for Automation vs. Temporal

April 2025

Free Report: IBM Cloud Pak for Automation vs. Temporal

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