Camunda Reviews

We only use the engine, and we have implemented our solution around Camunda Cloud.

We have a lot of use cases. In the past, the major use case was related to infrastructure ordering. If users wanted to onboard their applications to the cloud, the whole process was run by us. They would go to the ITSM tool that we have, and from there, the whole process of onboarding the application was run by us. For example, if you required certain access, all these accesses were provided by us. So, mainly, it was related to the infrastructure processes where you order something and have to talk to AD, Exchange, or other kinds of infrastructure products and systems you have in the company.

When I compare the old legacy platform to the current one, the number of incidents has reduced massively. Our platform is much more stable. We don't have the issue of any bottlenecks. In almost a year since we migrated all the workflows, there have been a limited number of incidents with regard to the platform.

It has definitely saved time. Due to the fact that we have fewer incidents, people were able to concentrate on platform improvements and automation of the platform itself. We are trying to automate as much as possible from our side. We could focus on improving Dev backups or CI/CD. We also improved a lot also with regard to implementing or POC'ing new features. We have much more time now to focus on new solutions that we can offer to our customer base.

Our team is called Oasis, which is a short form for Orchestration and System Integration Service. It's sort of our core that we want to integrate all the systems and orchestrate on the system. That's one of our key selling points. We have a team that has knowledge of most of the systems and how to integrate them. Camunda enables us to integrate, but the actual work is done by our team. All the brain power comes from the team.

We were able to cover all the use cases we had in the past. We were able to integrate with legacy systems, and we are also working on cloud-based solutions, such as Azure Functions, and other cloud services. I usually say to my customers that if their application or end system provides a proper interface such as REST, we will be able to integrate with their system. So far, we have been able to integrate with all the systems. We always try to find a solution, and so far, we have been successful in that part. With regards to RPA bots, we have not yet tried out the use case. It's yet to be proven from our side. We are currently testing out the decision engine and trying to promote that in the business areas. Depending on the success or basically on how people are adapting to that, we might also extend that, and it would probably be a new use case.

It can cover everything through code. That's really beneficial. In the past, you had to do certain configurations and things that usually were hidden in configuration, sub-configuration, and so on. So, only the ones who implemented the process would understand it, but now, due to the fact that everything is as code, everyone is able to read what's going on in the process. It's easy to see how the process is configured. It's more transparent for us to see how to change things, and it's easier to transfer tasks from one person to another. In the past, you had to deal with the subject matter expert on a specific process and the handover took much longer. Nowadays, it's much more fluid to understand the process and its implementation.

One reason we selected Camunda or Cloud/DB is that it comes with the support of the BPM notation, which helps to define processes in a standard manner. Another reason was that Camunda Cloud, as the name says, is designed for a new cloud era. That's why we went for that part. We were very early adopters of this solution. We introduced it even before version one was out. We hope that going forward, on the scalability side, we have the potential to scale the platform for future demand.

It's lightweight. It comes with a lot of flexibility, which, on the other hand, means that you have to have certain knowledge to handle features. You have the potential to change things, and it's easy to introduce new functionalities or new features to the platform. 

It's open source, which was another key factor for choosing Camunda. Its being open source helps us to understand the platform better and also integrate better with the platform.

They should focus more on enterprise challenges. We are using the enterprise license, and I would like to see more interactions with Camunda. The enterprise license should cover enterprise challenges. We would need more touchpoints so that Camunda understands better what's going on at the enterprise level. That's an area where Camunda could improve. They can understand the challenges of an enterprise and try to come up with solutions from their side for the enterprise.

As an enterprise license owner, if we have some ideas for features, we expect them to release the features faster than now. So, a bit faster feature release is an area for improvement.

There should be a multi-tenant solution for the platform where it supports multiple organizations on one platform instead of having to spin up multiple clusters for each organization. There should be an easy way to integrate different departments into one platform without having to operate multiple platforms. The operations should be easier with the enterprise solution. It should not create more overhead for the operations people.

Another improvement area is the licensing model. We are yet to find out a smart licensing model for Camunda. We are mainly using the CP engine, and we require only a support and service contract, but this is not yet possible. Their licenses were probably made 10 or 20 years ago, but we need tailor-made licenses for the implemented use case. As a platform owner, I have to provide our customers with a static price tag. The price should not increase exponentially, and we should be able to tell them that we are not overcharging them. If the cost gets too high, it's likely to not be used in the future.

We started the evaluation in 2019, and in 2020, we got everything approved. 

From '21 to '22, everything has been quite stable after all the workload migrated to the new platform. Nowadays, it's stable. There are some hiccups, but they are more related to introducing the new changes. Usually, we are able to deal with them in a meaningful timeframe so that they don't affect the customer base too much.

So far, we didn't face an issue with scalability. We started before version 1, and we are currently on the verge of moving to version 8. I would have more input after we have fully migrated to version 8.

I have interacted with them many times. Usually, the response is quite fast. I would rate them a 7 out of 10.

We were using a different solution previously.

I was here during its initial setup. It took quite some time because it also had to adhere to our architecture. We had to do some modifications to achieve this. It was quite intensive at the beginning. At the time, Camunda also provided Helm charts and other things, but in the end, we had to adjust too many things. So, we basically prepared our own automation in order to deploy the platform. It took us some time to make that automation ready. We wanted to have an easy way to apply the platform, and that took us some time. It was like an arrow that was dragged back, but in the end, it made us faster for new changes.

In terms of the deployment model, we provide it only as an internal service to Swiss Re itself. Currently, it's a hybrid setup. Parts of the solution are in the public cloud and parts of it are in the private cloud. It's deployed at multiple locations where the orchestration part is in the public cloud and the majority of the workers are in a private cloud. We have this sort of distribution of the platform.

In terms of the implementation strategy, we started the evaluation in 2019. We had multiple products. We did the proper requirements engineering and decided to go with Camunda. Before going to production, we organized Hacktoberfest where we invited our existing customers who were on the legacy platform. We let them try it out to see how it is for them. We got quite positive feedback from them, and based on that, we started the process of onboarding it.

Within Swiss Re, there's a standard process called the digital governance framework. We have to go through this extensive process where licenses are reviewed with regard to security, architecture, exposure to the network, etc. All these things are reviewed in this process. Within that process, we also have to do penetration testing to see if the system is viable for our use case and if it's secure. It was 2020 when we got everything approved. From there, we started with the migration. Along with the migration and complete evaluation, we onboarded new people to the team who had different skill sets required in order to run the platform in the future. So, we built up a new team in Budapest and also upscaled our existing team.

In the first phase, we mainly targeted people with a certain knowledge of IT and engineering. For them, it was easy to implement the workflows and so on. In the next or current phase, we are trying to introduce the platform to business users. In order to do that, we have to further improve the UI so that it's also easy for a business user to create a business process in the future. We are not there yet. It's an iterative process where we sit together with business process owners and try to find out their demands and adapt according to the demands. We are trying to avoid big-bang approaches and proceed in an iterative way, and with Camunda, we have the capability to iteratively improve ourselves.

For developers with a development or software engineering background, it's quite easy to implement Camunda. For those who do not have that knowledge, my team provides a service. We go to the teams and help them with the implementation of the workers and the workflows. So, we support it on an end-to-end basis. We get the requirements, document them, test them, and develop them. We cover all these things as an end-to-end service, but the goal for us is to move more and more toward a self-service platform. Until then, we will operate in a hybrid mode. So, currently, there are people who can do it themselves and deploy workflows, and there are people who require help from our side. Until we close the gap with self-service, we will support the people or designers. For business users, it's very important that it becomes very easy to use. Having an easy UI where they can drag and drop in their workflow and test it in a non-intrusive way is quite important going forward. It would be a success factor in the end. If we want to succeed in the business areas, we have to provide an easy platform that can be utilized by any person with limited knowledge of software engineering.

It hasn't had any effect on the cost of design, but the overall cost of operations and management is reduced. It has made our life a bit easier in terms of the reduction of incidents and the maintenance of the platform.

We are using the paid edition because there is no separate support and service license yet. We are yet to find a suitable licensing model for Camunda because we only use the engine, and we have implemented our solution around Camunda Cloud. So, we are mainly interested in the support and service, and that's what we mainly use in the paid edition.

It was a fairly new solution at the time, and we wanted to support the open-source community with that. So, we wanted to ensure that this product has some sort of backing so that it can continue.

To someone who has the free edition of Camunda and is considering upgrading to the paid license, I would say that it depends on the use case and the criticality of their system. In our case, if we have production issues, we want to post them quite fast and we want to have quite fast feedback cycles. One of the reasons why we have taken the license is to ensure that we have a proper response in a meaningful timeframe. If that's not a requirement, probably the open-source license makes sense. It also depends on the appetite for having new features on the platform.

We evaluated multiple options. We evaluated classical BPM solutions such as Activiti, Bonitasoft, and the Camunda BPM platform. We also looked at jBPM. On the non-BPM side, at the time, we looked at Uber Cadence and Netflix Conductor.

It's important to have the customers on board and work closely with them. That's because if they don't get what you are doing, you will not have customers. It's very important to work closely with the customers to be successful. It's important to make sure that customers understand what the platform does and how it's achieving. The training part and creating awareness are important. You need to create awareness about automation and what it can provide to customers.

Most of the time, people are too busy to do any automation, even though it will help them in the long run. What I learned is that you can't delegate it to a team. You have to be hands-on with the team and help them to make the automation. That is important.

From the Camunda perspective, you can start with the open-source version, and then at a later stage, evaluate if you require the enterprise features for your use case.

When it comes to connectors, we sometimes use the implementation provided by the community, but so far, we have not used the standard connectors provided with Camunda because, in Swiss Re, there are a lot of custom implementations, and sometimes, the connectors don't work straight away. So, we usually implement our own workers.

I would rate it an 8 out of 10. Once it has the improvements we need, I can give it a 10.

We use the workflow only in Camunda. It acts as libraries for workflow visualization, focusing on automating my company's processes.

Camunda is used for process automation with the bot automation. We use API from IPT software, and Camunda serves as a service for workflows. It has improved the cost benefits on Google Cloud.

Camunda serves as an automation library and provides lightweight deployment to the cloud. The personal thing for workflow automation is significant.

Camunda needs to improve its user interface for low-code development and provide more user interface options beyond the basic workflow. It also requires further development to compete with platform features, like the deployment and development life cycle.

We started using Camunda one year ago and began implementing some processes on the platform.

Camunda has benefits concerning the cost on Google Cloud, however, we have to invest more in development for scalability.

We have used IBM BPM before, however, Camunda was adopted for certain processes. Camunda doesn't require a license and offers a free version.

Camunda is cheap because it doesn't require a license. We can use the free version and manage everything in the company.

We plan to use Camunda workflows and relate them to IBM BPM in the future.

Camunda's platform could benefit from better UI for low-code development. Other competitor platforms have more comprehensive tools for deployment and development.

I'd rate the solution seven out of ten.

We use the product to automate our workflows. It is used for task management.

Camunda is a good product. The product has a good task management engine. Camunda has had a good impact on our operational efficiency. The integrations are getting better. It has a lot of REST APIs. We can integrate the tool via REST. It is a good feature. It's much better than what it used to be.

Camunda is Java-based. It would be better if the tool were made less reliant on Java.

I have been using the solution for four to five years.

The solution is very stable. I rate the stability a nine out of ten.

The solution is very scalable. I rate the scalability an eight and a half out of ten. We have more than 100 users. I use the product twice a week.

We have used Flowable. We also used an IBM product, but it was not very good. We chose Camunda because it is more scalable. It has a smaller footprint. It is the most effective product.

The initial setup is easy. I rate the ease of setup a nine out of ten. The solution has multiple deployment options. It has its own cloud services. The deployment takes just a few hours.

We deploy the tool in-house. We've embedded it within our application. We need only one person for the deployment.

We use the free version.

The number of people required to maintain the tool depends on the application in which it is embedded. We might not need many people for maintenance. Our in-house team resolves all our issues, so we do not have to contact support. There is a lot of documentation available. They are very good. The solution has BPMN and DMN. DMN is very powerful when modeling business decisions. The rules engine is very good. I will recommend it for the rules engine. Overall, I rate the product a nine out of ten.

We use it in the banking sector for a specific project. The platform aids in optimizing and automating business processes, enhancing operational efficiency, and ensuring seamless workflow management

Its flexibility stands out as the most valuable feature. I am content with its courses and the support team.

When addressing a complex and extensive process, the domain it belongs to, be it banking, healthcare, or HR, requires widespread access.

We have been working with it for more than five years.

I would rate its stability capabilities ten out of ten.

It offers excellent scalability. I would rate it ten out of ten. Our clientele comprises enterprises, medium-sized businesses, and small organizations.

Technical support from Comodo is accessible exclusively with the enterprise version, and it is highly commendable. They offer two support options, including the provision of an individual technical support manager. Our customers benefit from having personal vendors in support, capable of communicating in their native languages. For instance, if operating in Ukraine, clients can expect excellent service with a personal manager fluent in Ukrainian. I would rate it ten out of ten.

Positive

The initial setup was straightforward. I would rate it ten out of ten.

When it came to deployment, there were readily available options, along with clear instructions tailored for an open environment. We have it deployed on cloud as well as on-premise. The deployment timeframe varies, measured in hours or days, contingent upon specific customer requirements. Frequently, we initiate development, reproduction, and production environments. However, delays may arise as these environments can differ slightly, necessitating additional setup time.

ROI is influenced by the quality and usage. While the pricing structure is crucial, making an error in the planning can lead to substantial expenses. However, based on the feedback from our customers, they express satisfaction with Camunda. They assert that it provides extensive coverage and is more cost-effective compared to other business process systems.

While the license isn't budget-friendly, careful consideration and calculated planning for a significant number of licenses can make it more cost-effective. The pricing structure hinges on three crucial parameters: process instances, how frequently processes are initiated, and the number of users. These latter two factors exert a considerable influence on the overall cost. However, for those looking to explore it, trying the cloud version is a viable option. The cloud variant starts at $200 per month. I would rate it six out of ten.

Overall, I would rate it ten out of ten.

We used the solution in quite a simple manner. We were disappointed that the dictionary was missing. The hierarchy could not be shown, defined, or structured the way we like. We did not use all the features. I have used BPMN Modeler.

Camunda is really useful. That is why my colleagues and I use it in the company. The solution is useful for small projects.

The product does not have a dictionary. The tool must enable users to build or design sub-processes. It must provide a more convenient and easy way to define sub-processes.

I have been using the solution for five years.

The tool is always stable. We have no troubles. I rate the stability an eight to nine out of ten.

I rate the tool’s scalability a five out of ten. We have ten users. The product is used once or twice a week.

I rate the ease of setup seven to eight out of ten.

We use a community version.

All the business process management tools are quite similar. We have to get used to each application's individual ideas, thoughts, and intentions. We use BIC for our organization and Camunda for the projects. It is easier to use Camunda for small projects. Signavio is also a competitor.

It's not possible for us to define a process as deep as it is necessary to automate it. We tested but did not use DMN capabilities. I will recommend the solution to others. I just finished studying business process management. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

I use the solution in my company for process modeling and collaborations with other users.

The most valuable feature of the solution stems from the area revolving around process modeling. It is possible to take care of the process modeling with BPMN. I think the most beneficial feature of the product is that the tool serves as a process orchestration platform and also helps in the area of process automation.

Camunda should be able to automate the processes in any department, like the ones in HR that are related to procurement or any others, which are repeated in the same manner without any significant changes in the process, as it is one area where the product faces certain shortcomings.

I have been using Camunda for about three years. I am a customer of Camunda.

It is a stable solution. I have not faced any trouble when using the product in my company.

Camunda is a scalable product.

Around 10 to 15 people in my company use the product.

I have never contacted the solution's technical support.

The product's initial setup phase is difficult for beginners.

The solution is deployed on the cloud.

The product's price depends on the number of processes that need to be automated or where the orchestration part needs to be used. The product is affordable for medium and large enterprises.

My company chose Camunda since we wanted a tool for process modeling with BPMN so that we could automate some of our processes.

I recommend the product to those who plan to use it, as it is a simple and practical tool with powerful capabilities.

The product helps achieve operational efficiency in our company since it helps with the process modeling area. The product also helps automate and orchestrate processes effectively.

Camunda's user interface's contribution to process modeling and deployment stems from the fact that it is pretty intuitive and simple.

It is easy for someone to learn to use Camunda.

I rate the overall tool an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for workflow processes of different sectors.

The workflow builder is valuable. The graphical interface is very beneficial. We can build whatever workflow we need. Currently, we are integrating the solution with our document management system. It acts as a repository for the documents. Inbound and outbound integrations are very easy.

The solution fulfills our implementation needs. The interface is user-friendly compared to Oracle. The solution is well-known in Egypt. Even government sectors are switching to Camunda. There are a lot of materials available. The technical team did a lot of self-study. Now, we can integrate the solution with our document management system and implement the processes we need. I rate the documentation a nine out of ten.

The product must provide more videos and training materials.

I have been using the solution for one year.

The tool is very stable.

All our implementations have 50 to 100 users.

We use the forums when we need support. The product has a big community.

We did not encounter any issues during the installation or while building the workflows. We implement the tool for our customers.

The most attractive feature of the product is that it is open source.

We are currently promoting the product to our customers. They are using Oracle BPEL, which is a licensed solution. They need an open-source tool. So, we are suggesting Camunda to them. Camunda is comparable with the licensed products. The competitors might provide more features compared to Camunda, but they are not that valuable.

I recommend using the product. Overall, I rate the product an eight out of ten.

We use the solution for various application workloads, including the workflow for account management applications.

Process BPMN is an important feature where you can write your code.

The latency of API could be decreased.

I have been using Camunda for two years.

The product is stable.

The solution does not have high scalability. It can be useful for complex types of projects.

I rate the solution’s scalability a seven out of ten.

The initial setup is difficult to adapt. It takes two to three days to complete.

Camunda has saved around 30-40% of developers’ time, increasing their productivity.

Overall, I rate the solution a nine out of ten.

My company uses Camunda Platform as a business process optimization or business process engineering tool.

The most valuable feature of the solution is that it is flexible. I want to see if the tool is good enough for my company to continue with its use or if there are some limitations. If, at our company, we are sure that it would take us to complete your business processes engineering exercise up to the level of enterprise architecture, then we would really be able to appreciate the tool. I am unsure of the product's capabilities because I am unfamiliar. I want to get someone experienced enough to suggest to me which is the best choice for a BPM tool.

Collaborations and process documentation in Camunda Platform are areas with shortcomings that need improvement. It would be appreciated if we were more flexible in managing the processes.

I am unsure if we can get a beta version of the tool with many features, including data modeling, apart from process modeling. If we get something that can be achieved with data modeling and collaboration features for any tasks, including the ones from outside, it would be much more appreciated.

We want a common platform for taking care of customs and domestic taxes since that could be a good thing for our business process across our entire company.

I have been using Camunda Platform for about three months. I am a user of the product.

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.

My company has 6,000 employees, out of which around 100 people use the product.

I contacted the solution's technical support since I wanted them to give me some facts regarding the points raised by a person from GBTEC, a German company, who claims that Camunda Platform can't fulfill some expectations since its imitations in terms of capabilities, especially collaboration features. I dropped an email to Camunda Platform so that someone from the support can let me know about the product's data modeling and whether it can go up to the enterprise architecture level or if something is missing in it, because of which we might have to get a beta or higher version.

The initial setup was very easy and flexible.

The solution is deployed on-premises.

Camunda Platform is an open-source product.

We, the employees, had suggested the company authorities opt for Camunda Platform. I was looking into certain facts from Camunda's support team so that I can suggest a good way to help my company design business processes. Our company has to look after customs and domestic taxes, and BPMN in Camunda Platform has been done using the custom function.

We intend to do a few things with the product, and I am unsure if it would raise or drop the product's rating in the future.

So far, considering the modeling purposes for which we used the tool in the last month, I rate the overall solution a nine out of ten.

We use it as a task manager. Our use case is to help manage human tasks and have a workflow to which we can assign a function and some criteria to agents.

Camunda helped in an important way because we have a standard language in discussions between developers and business analysts. It has been key in closing that gap.

And although we haven't quantified things, generally, this type of platform will reduce the cost of in-house development.

The UI is very user-friendly compared to other products. The native, vanilla UI is very interesting and intuitive to use. It's user-friendly when it comes to modernizing a business process. 

The connectors provided by Camunda work correctly for mapping out and connecting processes. Our strategy is always to use out-of-the-box products.

It exposes a REST API that it can facilitate and make it easy to integrate with other systems.

We are not continuing with Camunda because of performance problems. We have millions of cases and when we did load testing with Camunda we found some limitations.

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.

They also need to integrate business role management, because Camunda doesn't have a built-in business-roles engine. The business analytics monitoring, the BAM portion, could also be improved.

We have been using Camunda Platform for about six months.

It's very stable.

In our strategy, we use containers on-premises to manage scalability using Docker or OpenShift.

Camunda's technical support is very good.

Positive

We had a solution before Camunda, but I don't want to identify it because we did not have a good experience with it.

The installation was very simple. With Camunda, it's very easy in comparison with other products.

We set up a dev environment and a laboratory environment, and it took about five days, max. We hoped to expose Camunda to our end-users, not only IT users but also business-type users.

We haven't seen return on investment because we need more time with this type of product. It's a long-term investment. It will take three, four, or five years to see a return.

The price is competitive with products like Bonitasoft and RHPAM (Red Hat Process Automation Manager). We have two versions of Camunda. The first version was open source, without support, but then we got a supported version.

Other products, like Pega or IBM or Oracle, are very expensive.

We have evaluated Bonitasoft and RHPAM.

Camunda and other products—like Bonitasoft and RHPAM —have been chosen, strategically, by our enterprise to reduce the gap between developers and analysts, because we talk the same language: BPMN.

The only negative point was the performance. If a company wants to use it with small or medium-sized systems that do not need a lot of performance, it would be a good choice.