Bonita Platform vs. Power Apps

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

PowerApps is well suited for "quick-wins" and fast prototypes of business solutions. It also is beneficial for situations where business partners and developers work together - it allows the business folks to provide a "quick-and-dirty" prototype which is then fleshed-out by developers that are trained experts on the platform. The interactive and easy to understand representation of the solution allows business partners to "see" the solution and add, remove, or correct aspects of it themselves. It provides a common view and understanding of the actual solution across business units and tech teams. PowerApps, being a low-code\no-code platform is not well suited for business processes that require many complex computations or large amounts of custom code - such as solutions that are better architected as Web Site or "full-blown" desktop solutions. There are solutions that are just not easy or quick to accomplish in a low-code\no-code platform. Enterprise Architects should know the difference, however business partners often try to create a solution and only when stuck because it becomes too complex do they engage a tech team for assistance - at which point there are sunk-costs involved and hinderences to re-platforming the solution

• 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

• Power Apps has formats that are pre-built that don't require any coding which makes it easier to achieve your vision. This does become a challenge if your App needs don't fit into that format.
• We deal with a ton of data so the fact that you can connect to any data source in addition to their pre-stablished data connections makes the process a breeze.
• The online learning resources and tutorials are helpful as well for those who are tech savvy.

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

• PowerApps has a great coding option, but there are some pieces of the tool that the requirement to understand code is a barrier to fun if the user doesn't code.
• MUCH time can be spent looking for solutions on this young platform and the body of forum/help/lessons learned is not as robust as it will be in a few years.
• Like many early-stage Microsoft products, PowerApps is a relatively blank slate that will be improved by the feedback of their users and ongoing feature development. Right now it seems that the product lacks a critical mass of use-case driven templates (there are some, but I haven't yet found one that didn't require more work to customize it to my need that it would take to build my own tool).

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

PowerApps is a great solution and I have spent the last year familiarizing myself with the platform and building custom applications to complete a whole range of tasks such as asset management, custom invoice generation, and item restriction tracking. We as a company have barely begun to scratch the surface of what can be achieved with PowerApps.

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

The community forums are extremely responsive to questions asked, there is a good body of online documentation and many community posts to draw from. Although the platform has changed, which means some of the posts are out of date and the solutions provided aren't relevant. Of relevance, I read over 400 articles plus documentation to get this first app built in SharePoint, move it to SQL and make it work exactly the way it should.

Nothing in particular

Incentivized

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

1. PowerApps functionality comes with E1 over E3 License without adding extra costs 2. For Nintex you pay (at the beginning) for each workflow, so my intention would be, to do no workflows to prevent additional costs, but I want a platform with a fair price that allows me to create workflows without thinking about the price for each workflow and we use only some workflow and relative easy workflows and forms as a medium-sized company. 3. PowerApps provides a lot of functionality without needing to invest in premium features directly.

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'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

• Automation of manual processes brings an ROI on labor costs.
• Intake of data provides clean database design.
• Connectivity to data-lake provides insights and trends into the data.
• Able to scale operations with efficiencies provided by the app.
• Can mature the process and workflows to do more.

Incentivized