Bonita Reviews

The most valuable features are:

• Development of forms and flows
• Flow execution
• Database connectors

In my MBA class, I use Bonita BPM to teach BPMN design and execution.

The Cloud version should have a different billing model. I have installed the image of Bonita BPM on Amazon AWS and there is just one option to use and pay for.

I have used this solution for two years.

Bonita BPM is simple and fast. It is very easy to install and use.

Scalability of the Bonita BPM Community version is low. The paid version may be better, but I don't have contact with it.

I use the Community version that doesn't have support. Documentation is weak.

Oracle BPM was too heavy and complex, I needed a simpler solution and that is why I selected this solution.

The setup was very easy.

We evaluated other solutions, such as Oracle, IBM, and MuleSoft.

The important criteria while selecting a vendor are support, good price, good quality and performance.

You should check also Oracle and IBM BPM on cloud. However, if your company doesn't have a big budget, then Bonita BPM could be a good option.

I was tasked with evaluating three different BPM vendors for my organization. Of the 3 I evaluated, Bonita was the best in:

• creating forms
• ease of customization of forms
• versatility of supported platforms (we have both Macs and Windows machines, and the Studio will work on both)
• It is the only BPM platform that I've seen so far that allows for versioning of artifacts.
• Though we'd like to have a totally non-programming implementation, Bonita facilitates scripts where needed. It doesn't use any type of proprietary scripting language, like I saw in some other BPM products.

Our first use case is not in production yet, but our business users have expressed how they feel it will add the needed checks and reviews to an area where data was updated without any type of review process.

The documentation and examples definitely could be enhanced.

6 months

Not in production yet.

It has been very stable in our dev environment so far.

It was very easy to install both the studio and the server engine.

We installed it via our in-house team.

BizAgi, Process Maker

Before choosing any BPM product, definitely do a real world POC with and test ease of connectivity to external systems via REST or SOAP, evaluate ease of form development, and ease of custimization.

1- Rapid Live Process Design and verification

2- Webservices and Connector

3- Form Builder

1- Designing processes is a two way street: you design and verify and the verification process usually is a guess work. But with Bonita BPM, you can run the process (as it will in the final stage) immediately after the design stage, giving you 100% control over the quality of your processes and flows.

2- Designing processes requires interaction with other systems to get, set, update and delete objects. With Bonita Connectors, it's really easy to design and run processes which interact with other systems.

3- Quick prototyping by utilizing the Form Builder, get your data as per your requirements and prototype the process/application FAST!

BPMN 2.0 notations are not all supported, would love to see them all coming in (e.g. complex gateway)

1. User friendly
2. Easy implementation
3. Reduced cycle time to implement a process
4. Bonita Studio provides a more look & feel and flexibility for changing the process and forms

BPM helps to automate complicated processes.

It requires improvements for better look & feel and for flexibility in changing the code in the portal.

It's been four years.

No issues.

Good

The community forums are very good for providing answers on technical issues.

It is a good product!

Real java-like hooks into development of the business process model. The Connector implementation is a great addition to an out-of-box solution providing robust features for the developer to build hassle-free integrations. I also really liked the way Bonitasoft lets you define and configure how your connector interface is exposed to others leveraging your custom connector.

Would love for some of the documentation to be better, since there are many great functionalities built into the product!

No

At times Bonita BPM Studio crashes, intermittently.

9

9

No, very straight forward.

In-house.

Process modelling and web screen development

The major improvement that I see is a paradigm shift to how work should be accomplished over how the industry has always been forced to do the work. Historically, there was a 'no man's land' between the business analyst and the developer. Web developers have been asked to understand the business process models without knowledge that the real business analysts have always had at their finger tips and visa-versa. 

BonitaBPM allows the BA's to model the processes and produce the base screens at the same time. This removes the need for back and forth exchanges between the team disciplines, reducing errors and time. It also allows the developers to spend their time doing what they know and are well paid to do, coding.

The menus likely would be more intuitive if read in French. Things seem to be under strange headings at times. With experience this is a minor issue for the gain.

We only use the open source product, so this is not a real complaint as much as a statement: Support for the open source is only at the highest levels of usage. Getting down to the details is an exercise one needs to plan for or purchase the commercial offering.

I hope to use this product for many years to come. It is more than helpful, it is worth the effort of learning to better our company.

• Ease of implementation
• Reduced cycle time to implement a process
• Studio provides an opportunity to get early feedback from real users and quickly change the process and forms

7 months

No

No issues.

No issues.

Good

Excellent

No previous solutions.

In-house

With our own processes, we have found the extensible connector system to be very useful (our processes can connect with legacy and 3rd party systems in a simple, well defined way).

When we interact with clients, the BPM workflows from Bonita BPM make defining processes and clarifying system flow much easier.  We used to draw system diagrams on whiteboards; now, we create simple models as functional demos. 

Our lead generation system involves both automated and human tasks. By centralizing the workflow to our internal Bonita BPM system, we have improved the conversion rate (leads to customers) and lowered the number of leads dropped. Things do not slip through the cracks any longer.

A number of the problem areas that we have run into in the past have been addressed in the newest version (7.0 beta). Things like custom app integration and human task forms have been greatly simplified.

That said, creating custom connectors for 3rd party applications and APIs is still a challenging task. Debugging, in particular, is difficult. I feel that when the development process for custom connectors becomes simpler, there will be many more available connectors.

We have been using this software internally and for our clients since 2011

We have always deployed servers using Apache Tomcat. Our team is most familiar with this Java Application Server. Since our applications have always run as stand alone systems, this makes sense - if they required a full JEE stack, we would look at JBoss (with it's increased functionality and complexity).

The deployed systems have been fairly stable. Most of the challenges we have run into have been as a result of the hardware and network infrastructures - not as a result of Bonita.

So far, we have not had to scale beyond a single server install. The software has scaled up to hundreds of concurrent processes and run well on the single server.

Generally, the customer service has been great. I have interacted with a number of people at BonitaSoft (Jon Sanchez and Olivia Halaimi stand out in my memory as particularly nice to work with), all have been pleasant and helpful.

Previously, we developed custom business systems. We switched to Bonita because it cut down development time and is easier to demo to prospective clients.

The initial install of Bonita Studio is very simple.

The jump from Bonita Studio to a full installation requires a solid understanding of IS and the resources to implement internal server deployments. It's quite a large jump from a demonstration with a desktop studio to even a simple deployment in a real world system.

We implemented with our in-house team.

The return on investment is difficult to quantify because Bonita BPM has become tightly integrated in all our internal processes.

I can say that 2014 saw a 50% increase in staffing and an 80% increase in gross revenue over 2013 (when we first implemented Bonita BPM internally). 2015 is on track to show even more significant increases.

We took a look at a number of the open source BPM solutions (including Activiti, JBPM and Drools). We found that Bonita BPM provided the best balance of clarity for non-technical users and development flexibility.