Camunda provides a workflow and decision automation platform offering process orchestration capabilities to organizations of any size. Camunda Platform comes from years of research and development including open source initiatives.

Camunda Platform
Developer(s)Camunda
Initial releaseAugust 31, 2013; 11 years ago (2013-08-31)
Stable release
8.5.0[1] / 9 April 2024; 7 months ago (9 April 2024)
Repository
Written inJava
Operating systemCross-platform
TypeWorkflow and decision automation
License
Websitehttps://www.camunda.com

Camunda Platform ships with tools for creating workflow and decision models, operating deployed models in production, and allowing users to execute workflow tasks assigned to them.[2] It is developed in Java and released as source-available software; the Desktop Modeler is licensed under the MIT License, other components under proprietary licenses.[3] Camunda is present in North and South America, Asia, and Europe.[4]

It provides a Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN) standard compliant workflow engine and a Decision Model and Notation (DMN) standard compliant decision engine, which can be embedded in Java applications and with other languages via REST.

History

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Camunda was founded by Jakob Freund and Bernd Rücker in 2008 as a business process management (BPM) consulting company.[5] Over the next four years, Camunda built a consulting customer base of more than 250 customers.[5]

On 18 March 2013, Camunda forked the Activiti project to launch Camunda BPM as an open-source project.[5][6]

In 2017 and 2018, Camunda was named in Deloitte Technology Fast 500 EMEA.[7] and in 2019 and 2020 was listed in Deloitte's Technology Fast 50 Germany.[8][9]

In December 2018, Camunda raised 25 million in series A funding from Highland Europe.[5][10]

In March 2021, Camunda raised 82 million in a series B funding round led by Insight Partners, along with series A investors Highland Europe.[11]

In April 2022, Camunda released Camunda Platform 8,[12] which incorporates Zeebe, a cloud-native workflow and decision engine.

Architecture

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Camunda Platform is a lightweight, Java-based framework. It can be used as a standalone process engine server or embedded inside custom Java applications. It offers non-Java developers a REST API and dedicated client libraries to build applications connecting to a remote workflow engine.[2]

Camunda 8 is a cloud-native solution based on the Zeebe orchestration and decision engine, which is developed and supported in parallel with Camunda 7. Zeebe uses Event Stream Processing (ESP) to enable high-performance process automation. Developers can interact with Zeebe via clients written in Java, Go and various other programming languages. Camunda 8 also provides extensive REST APIs for all parts of the platform.[13]

Features

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The Camunda Modeler desktop application allows developers to create and edit BPMN process diagrams and DMN decision tables.[2] Created files are deployed in the Camunda Engines, which use a BPMN parser to transform BPMN 2.0 XML files, and DMN XML files, into Java Objects, and implements BPMN 2.0 constructs with a set of BPMN Behavior implementations.[6]

Typical use cases for the Camunda BPMN Workflow Engine can be microservices orchestration and human task management.[14]

The Camunda DMN Decision Engine executes business-driven decision tables. It is pre-integrated with the Workflow Engine but can be used as a stand-alone application via REST or inside Java applications.[2][15]

Camunda’s additional web applications provide the following tools for developers and business users:[6]

  • Operate: A tool for technical process operations enabling users to monitor workflows and decisions in production, to analyze and solve technical problems.[2]
  • Tasklist: Allows end users to work on assigned tasks and provides additional visibility when using the Camunda Workflow Engine for human task management.
  • Optimize: An analytics and reporting tool to identify errors and bottlenecks in workflow processes.
  • Modeler: A collaborative modeling tool allowing multiple users to create, edit and specify BPMN process diagrams.
  • Console: Allows users to manage Camunda web applications or REST API users. Existing user management can be integrated via LDAP.

Clients

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Camunda has been deployed in companies such as True Engineering 24 Hour Fitness, Royal Bank of Scotland, Lufthansa Technik, Zalando,[10] NASA, Universal Music, AXA Insurance, Intuit, T-Mobile,[citation needed] Kühne + Nagel, Sparebank1 and Generali.

References

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  1. ^ "8.5 Release notes". 9 April 2024. Retrieved 17 September 2024.
  2. ^ a b c d e "Bossie Awards 2015: The best open source applications". InfoWorld. 16 September 2015. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  3. ^ "Licenses". camunda.com. Retrieved 22 September 2022.
  4. ^ "Camunda.com". Retrieved 13 April 2023.
  5. ^ a b c d Miller, Ron (5 December 2018). "Camunda hauls in $28M investment as workflow automation remains hot". Tech Crunch. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  6. ^ a b c Humble, Charles (21 March 2013). "Camunda Forks Alfresco Activiti". InfoQ. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  7. ^ "Technology Fast 500 Europe, Middle East & Africa (EMEA)". Deloitte. Retrieved 14 June 2019.
  8. ^ "The fastest-growing technology companies in Germany".
  9. ^ "The fastest-growing technology companies in Germany".
  10. ^ a b Degeler, Andrii (5 December 2018). "German workflow automation startup Camunda raises €25 million". tech.eu. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  11. ^ Miller, Ron (22 March 2021). "Camunda snares $98M Series B as process automation continues to flourish". Tech Crunch. Retrieved 13 April 2021.
  12. ^ "Camunda Platform 8 Launched as Universal Process Orchestrator" (Press release). BusinessWire. 12 April 2022. Retrieved 24 April 2023.
  13. ^ https://blog.viadee.de/camunda-8-release
  14. ^ "From zero to DevOps: The Camunda journey". JAXenter. 1 June 2018. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
  15. ^ Culbertson, Joy (25 December 2017). "ProgrammableWeb's Most Interesting APIs in 2017: Business and Productivity". ProgrammableWeb. Retrieved 22 March 2019.
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