Bonita Platform vs. IBM Business Automation Workflow

Overview
ProductRatingMost Used ByProduct SummaryStarting Price
Bonita Platform
Score 8.4 out of 10
N/A
Bonita is an open-source business process and workflow management platform created by the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science. It is available as a free community edition or as a commercial subscription product.N/A
IBM Business Automation Workflow
Score 9.3 out of 10
N/A
IBM Business Automation Workflow is a solution that helps users automate digital workflows to increase productivity, efficiency and insights — on premises or on cloud.N/A
Pricing
Bonita PlatformIBM Business Automation Workflow
Editions & Modules
No answers on this topic
No answers on this topic
Offerings
Pricing Offerings
Bonita PlatformIBM Business Automation Workflow
Free Trial
NoYes
Free/Freemium Version
YesNo
Premium Consulting/Integration Services
YesNo
Entry-level Setup FeeNo setup feeNo setup fee
Additional Details
More Pricing Information
Community Pulse
Bonita PlatformIBM Business Automation Workflow
Considered Both Products
Bonita Platform

No answer on this topic

IBM Business Automation Workflow
Chose IBM Business Automation Workflow
IBM BPM makes development easier, which is faster when compared to the others. IBM's customer support is good. Easy for the user to learn while providing powerful integration. More secure when compared to others. It provides the reusability of components. Monitoring and report …
Top Pros
Top Cons
Features
Bonita PlatformIBM Business Automation Workflow
Reporting & Analytics
Comparison of Reporting & Analytics features of Product A and Product B
Bonita Platform
7.3
43 Ratings
11% below category average
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
20% above category average
Dashboards7.841 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Standard reports6.240 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Custom reports8.040 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Process Engine
Comparison of Process Engine features of Product A and Product B
Bonita Platform
7.8
53 Ratings
8% below category average
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
17% above category average
Process designer8.752 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Process simulation6.910 Ratings10.03 Ratings
Business rules engine8.142 Ratings10.04 Ratings
SOA support7.840 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Process player6.78 Ratings10.03 Ratings
Support for modeling languages8.438 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Form builder7.948 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Model execution7.648 Ratings10.04 Ratings
Collaboration
Comparison of Collaboration features of Product A and Product B
Bonita Platform
7.0
24 Ratings
16% below category average
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
3 Ratings
20% above category average
Social collaboration tools7.024 Ratings10.03 Ratings
Content Management Capabilties
Comparison of Content Management Capabilties features of Product A and Product B
Bonita Platform
6.8
34 Ratings
18% below category average
IBM Business Automation Workflow
10.0
4 Ratings
21% above category average
Content management6.834 Ratings10.04 Ratings
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Bonita PlatformIBM Business Automation Workflow
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Medium-sized Companies
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Enterprises
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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Score 9.0 out of 10
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User Ratings
Bonita PlatformIBM Business Automation Workflow
Likelihood to Recommend
8.6
(53 ratings)
10.0
(8 ratings)
Likelihood to Renew
6.1
(3 ratings)
8.0
(4 ratings)
Usability
7.4
(25 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
Performance
8.0
(2 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Support Rating
4.6
(3 ratings)
8.0
(2 ratings)
In-Person Training
-
(0 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Implementation Rating
4.5
(5 ratings)
9.0
(1 ratings)
Ease of integration
7.3
(10 ratings)
-
(0 ratings)
Product Scalability
7.5
(10 ratings)
10.0
(1 ratings)
User Testimonials
Bonita PlatformIBM Business Automation Workflow
Likelihood to Recommend
Bonitasoft
Well suited for low code/no code applications centered around approval flows. It has built-in task management for users to see their pending actions, comments, statuses, etc. It has a very nice design for process flows. Less appropriate may be for generic type applications with complex screens and logic within those screens that need a lot of data to process.
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IBM
Have your process first on paper Its important to first document the process before venturing into BPMS. It will save a lot of pain and heartaches. A BPM tool is no magic bullet, it merely automates your process. Its upto you to put visibility and tracking on top of it. Provide monitoring so that you get a chance to improve your process continously. BPM is not an application If you are trying to build an application with BPM, chances are that your are alraedy failing. BPM must be a strategic initiative for an organization. Yes, you build Dashboards, Reports and other software in BPMS, however you do it at a process level not at an application level. http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2011/05/bpm-initiative.html Know the difference between process data and business data http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2011/05/lombardi-best-practices.html http://bpmstech.blogspot.com/2012/02/bpm-system-architecture.html
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Pros
Bonitasoft
  • Bonita seems particularly suited for processes requiring a great deal of human interaction. Its user model allows you to control access to business processes in a fine-grained way. This allows for business processes to move smoothly between users and services as the process advances.
  • The definition and usage of custom forms from the latest version of Bonita seems particularly powerful. It allows for a thorough customization of the look-and-feel and does not require complex developments.
  • The web interface and administration section have greatly improved in the latest versions. Installation and configuration of processes has become more flexible and more structured. The administration section gives a good view on failed processes, allowing to analyse problems in an efficient way.
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IBM
  • System does a great job normalizing business process and automating order processing tasks. Before TeamWorks, the process was much more manual and more expensive staff ($65k to $70K) were required to manage the process. Since implementing TeamWorks, we need much lower-skilled workers to manage order processing.
  • System ensures that we have consistent data across all systems.
  • Rules engine is really the “company playbook” – it is the heart and soul of how the company works. It handles thousands of orders per day
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Cons
Bonitasoft
  • There is a learning curve beyond the boot camps that needs to be addressed with more structured curriculum.
  • The full stack technologies are industry standard, but these [are] challenging to learn and could use a learning path and orientation. There's probably opportunity for third-parties here to help with learning and adoption.
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IBM
  • The system gets crashed when many instances go into the queue stage. The system even crashes and sometimes restarts automatically when the load on the server increases. We had to develop a separate software for this and maintain the same.
  • We cannot manipulate the data during run time. It is difficult to develop user-interfaces with complex functionality.
  • In order to consume external services that follow HTTP protocol, we need to use IDE for that, and consuming services from IDE takes a lot of time to give a response.
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Likelihood to Renew
Bonitasoft
We just renewed our license
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IBM
This particular decision will be made by other people. Overall IBM BPM is the best BPM engine that I have worked with. It is implemented at our company and IT and business are already somewhat familiar with it. Therefore if asked I will recommend renewal as long as the price is reasonable.
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Usability
Bonitasoft
Bonita Platform has allowed us to develop GUI relatively fast using its UI Designer while being able to seamlessly integrate our business logic in Java in a BPMN2 process diagram. It gives a nice productivity boost but still requires programming know-how to be able to deliver the final solution to your business problems.
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IBM
• The system is easy enough to use but, by definition, is a complex tool. However, they have done a good job generally balancing tool complexity / capability with usability. When comparing to MS Biz Talk, for example, Biz Talk has less functionality but is actually harder to use.
• Software is very flexible. For somebody with the right technical background, it’s quite easy to write some Java code to overcome any hurdles or make the product do what is needed
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Performance
Bonitasoft
Engine itself is efficient enough for most cases I dealt with. It can also be extended by clustering. I have done performance tests with JMeter and only managed to induce the crash of... JMeter. If there are efficiency issues they usually concern bad design/implementation of created apps or bottlenecks in integrated systems. Although I have met two cases with efficiency loss.
1. Java 7 related PermGen saturation caused by big number of installed apps (there is no jar dependency reusal between apps option).
2. Big number of waiting event handlers in processes stresses the database.
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IBM
No answers on this topic
Support Rating
Bonitasoft
It was sometimes difficult to get support on Bonita API.
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IBM
Issues can be raised through tickets and it works based on the priority of the issue. The Support Team response is also good and the solution is provided in a short span of time. In a case where the issue is serious, they try to find out the root cause and provide an alternative for it.
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In-Person Training
Bonitasoft
No answers on this topic
IBM
• Attended on premise sysadmin training for 4 days, 8 hours per day. Although further follow-up training was available, I never felt the need to go back. Training was very hands-on with real modeling (rather than just following a manual). Very effective.
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Implementation Rating
Bonitasoft
Nothing in particular
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IBM
• Very satisfied – not too difficult at all.
• We had a consultant available as part of our contract, but we didn’t really need to use (except for some advice on ActiveDirectory and single sign-on)
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Alternatives Considered
Bonitasoft
RHPAM is maybe a very good BPM process engine but is very limited to build a complete application.
We also try site soft W4 which needs more developments to build an application. We finally choose Bonita which is easier to get ready with.
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IBM
Pega Pega is a comprehensive suite which offers a unique theme of BPM development in the market. A no-coding approach based on rules with inheritance makes Pega a very powerful product. However Pega, falls short on integration centric capabilities and very rigid to customize. On the other hand IBM comes with array of products which suits needs of varying degree. Advanced integration is solved by BPEL Process Server which has support for state based patterns and mediation. Dynamic rules and event management can be solved with WODM, Cloud to on-premise connectivity with Cast Iron, Enterprise gateway and security usecases with DataPower, Social BPM with IBM BPM , WODM, mobify with Worklight. Pega has a little bit of eveything here and there. It solves the dynamic rule management, brings out the flavor of Social BPM and mobility with Antenna ( I guess) and predictive analytics as well in one single suite. There are certain usecases which needs to have a little bit of everything, however this little bits and pieces of functionality when its blows, Pega would have problems to scale. With IBM its a bit nightmare to maintain a variety of technologies, however you can wish to go for one without the other and go for something only when you truly need it. Pega vs IBM Its difficult to pick a winner. In nutshell when you want a full scale BPM with rich integration capabilities go for IBM BPM. On the other hand if you hava mature integration capability already, Pega can yield quick results for you as well. Pega's strength is its methodology. IBM BPM's strength is integration. Actually you can't go wrong with both in terms of implementation. My strong recommendation is to invest time to process analysis and pick a good vendor to support consulting and implementation.
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Scalability
Bonitasoft
Respect of BPMN standard over the long term. Good enhancements by Bonitasoft for new use cases, for example the introduction of a real form editor even if it has been technically difficult to manage. Once done though, we have far greater possibility of human interaction.
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IBM
It scales from small team interactions to business processes serving thousands of employees, as well as straight-through-processing needs that go well beyond. Of course, scale is always in the eye of the beholder, but IBM BPM does a good job of giving you all of the hooks, APIs, and data that you need to take on whatever scaling approaches you need to meet the load
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Return on Investment
Bonitasoft
  • Case management provided as better tracking which help us to meet SLAs.
  • Auto email notification helps to address "Where are my request" answers which eventually increased our customer delight index.
  • By using the third-party integration, we are able to provide visibility w.r.t end to end request status.
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IBM
  • It has added value to the upper management to give visibility into what is happening at any time in the enterprise.
  • Boosted employee morale because it gives them all the information to work the case/task in a single location.
  • Identifies bottlenecks and improves the turnover.
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ScreenShots

Bonita Platform Screenshots

Screenshot of Process designed in Bonita BPM StudioScreenshot of Bonita BPM project overviewScreenshot of Fully customized end user interfaceScreenshot of Bonita BPM Admin App