8 Open Source BPM Software Options

Drew Robb

Updated · Oct 27, 2016

Open source business process management (BPM) software appears to account for a large percentage of recent innovation in the broader BPM market.

“Open source solutions are leading the evolution of the BPM technologies: from pure BPM solutions that automate processes, increase productivity and ensure regulatory compliance to business application platforms that include tools and capabilities to empower DevOps teams to effectively create and maintain business applications,” said Miguel Valdes Faura, CEO and founder of Bonitasoft, provider of an open source BPM platform.

The trends in open source BPM software mirror the broader BPM market, said Phil Simpson, manager, BPM Product Marketing for Red Hat, mentioning a move away from on-premise deployments in favor of BPM-as-a-service, and adoption of more dynamic ad-hoc case management style flows in lieu of rigid process models.

While proprietary BPM products often exist as standalone solutions that require business logic development lifecycles to be maintained independently from other software – which creates governance issues for the IT organizations charged with managing them — open source BPM software is more likely to utilize open standards and tools such as Git and Maven that are widely deployed in IT organizations, Simpson said. Open source BPM software is more likely to be compatible with continuous integration and delivery pipelines that allow IT to treat business logic in the same way as other software assets.

The analyst community is taking notice of open source BPM software, too.

“Business process leaders will ramp up their adoption of open source BPM as a credible and more cost effective alternative to proprietary BPM software vendors,” said Clay Richardson, an analyst at Forrester Research. “Open source insurgents will challenge the supremacy of proprietary BPM vendors.”

Drew Robb
Drew Robb

Drew Robb is a writer who has been writing about IT, engineering, and other topics. Originating from Scotland, he currently resides in Florida. Highly skilled in rapid prototyping innovative and reliable systems. He has been an editor and professional writer full-time for more than 20 years. He works as a freelancer at Enterprise Apps Today, CIO Insight and other IT publications. He is also an editor-in chief of an international engineering journal. He enjoys solving data problems and learning abstractions that will allow for better infrastructure.

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