Alpha Anywhere vs. Bonita Platform

We use Alpha Anywhere to develop large scale business applications. So far, we haven't found any real limitations. This is exemplified by my response to my customers who frequently ask, "Is it possible..." I always interrupt them before this sentence goes any further by telling them, "with our development platform, anything's possible" (then we have to discuss whether the time/cost is worth the added benefit of what they're requesting).

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• We import our medication files.
• We save the patient’s History & Physical documents to S3 buckets. The documents range from 30-300 pages.
• We export billing files to the Medicare mainframe.
• We run over 80 audits on each chart per day.

• Efficient and fast prototyping: a process can be modeled and tried out quickly and with low investment.
• Full stack prototyping for development and implementation allows the process to be developed and implemented as an application from the prototype. It's not just drawings and wire frames that are tossed over the wall to developers.
• Data modeling is integral from the beginning of the prototype which is appropriate for the stakeholders in the beginning.

Incentivized

• There is no drag and drop form designer however this is not a big problem once you get used to it and through the use of genies, templates, etc.

Incentivized

• There is only one business data model. Even if deploying new processes does not require stopping the platform, the BDM update requires it.
• During the platform evolution often new bugs were introduced so it was risky to deploy the platform in the low minor version. For example, there were memory leaks from 7.2.0 to 7.2.3.
• The administrator portal could be improved. It is hard to look at subprocess data, for example and it is sometimes better to investigate with SQL queries. I don't like new (7.3) task list either.

Incentivized

We just renewed our license

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

It was sometimes difficult to get support on Bonita API.

Incentivized

Nothing in particular

Incentivized

I stopped evaluating alternate products several years ago as Alpha Anywhere has continued to develop and keep up with technological advances to my satisfaction. Having made the decision to focus development with Alpha Anywhere, I have not looked back and continue to develop at pace for my existing and growing client base.

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.

Incentivized

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.

Incentivized

• We see it is becoming more & more valuable in our business
• Our competition has everything we do, except a Clerking program which we developed in Alpha
• Converting to the Cloud hasn't been cheap for us but we feel it will be well worth it

• We've had serious problems with 'automated' processes in earlier versions of Bonita (via Talend), especially with connectors. In Bonita 7 we replaced these with REST calls, hoping for better performance.
• Overall, using Bonita has not had a positive impact on our development efficiency. Moving from Talend (using Bonita 5) to Bonita 7 has improved this somewhat. Still, it remains a pain to integrate Bonita in the development and delivery process.
• Migrating from Bonita 7.0 to 7.1 has proven to be a difficult undertaking, mainly on the database level. This has cost us a lot of time and better support would be welcomed.

Incentivized