Open Source BPM Applications

As more and more organizations adopt an open source strategy, BPM is an interesting domain to consider in this arena. This article presents a list of good commercial open source BPM solutions. 

 

 

JBoss jBPM is a JBoss Enterprise Framework that delivers workflow, business process management (BPM), and process orchestration in a scalable and flexible product footprint. JBoss jBPM reduces development time to automate and integrate business processes leveraging IT. It provides the tools and process execution engine to integrate services deployed in a service-oriented architecture (SOA) and automate workflows in Java and Web applications to reduce business process error, speed process execution, and enhance business performance.

JBoss jBPM enables IT flexibility by supporting multiple-process languages with the same scalable process engine platform. It’s pluggable architecture is extensible and customizable on every level: within the process engine, for each process definition, and every corresponding process instance. It seamlessly integrates with JBoss Seam which is an application framework for simplifying and unifying the EJB and Java Server Faces (JSF) component models. JBoss jBPM provides a process-oriented programming model (jPDL) that blends the best of both Java and declarative programming techniques.

 

 

Intalio is an open source business process platform built around the standards-based Eclipse STP BPMN modeler and Apache ODE BPEL engine, both originally contributed by Intalio. Intalio Enterprise provides all the components required for the design, deployment, and management of the most complex business processes which includes

• BRE
• BAM
• Porta
• ESB
• ECM

Intalio is available in several editions but what we’re most interested in is Intalio’s free community edition. This edition is made of two components, Intalio Designer and Intalio Server. Intalio Designer allows one to model  the business level processes for the model to be eventually deployed to Intalio Server. Intalio Designer is the only tool currently available on the market that allows any BPMN model to be turned into fully executable BPEL processes without having to write any code. Intalio Server is a high-performance process engine that can support the most complex business processes, deployed within mission-critical environments.

 

 

ProcessMaker is an open source business process management (BPM) and workflow software designed for small and mid-sized businesses (SMBs). It is a user friendly solution to manage workflow effectively and efficiently. Business users and process experts with no programming experience can design and run workflows, increase transparency, and radically reduce paperwork, automate processes across systems, including human resources, finance, and operations.

With ProcessMaker you can easily create workflow maps, design custom forms, extract data from external data sources and many more key features to optimize workflow management and business operations.

One key advantage of ProcessMaker is the online library which provides many process templates for you to download and begin editing. Learning curve can also be reduced since you’re starting from one which is already readily built and tested.

 

CuteFlow is a web-based open source document circulation and workflow system. Users are able to define “documents” which are send step by step to every station/user in a list.
It’s an electronic way for doing (i.e. internal) document circulations. A document can be assembled from input fields of different types. The fields can be filled with values by the receiver of the document directly in the users E-Mail-Client. After a completed circulation you will have a completely filled document. Also attachments to the document are possible (i.e. for illustration material). All operations like starting a workflow, tracking, workflow-definition or status observation can be done within a comfortable and easy to use web interface.

 

 

ActiveVOS is a standards-based visual orchestration system. ActiveVOS revolutionizes the work of automating business processes by making it easier than ever before to create BPM applications that radically improve business results. ActiveVOS also overcomes the cost barrier that has until now delayed many organizations’ BPM efforts.

ActiveVOS system consists of the ActiveVOS Designer and the ActiveVOS Server. ActiveVOS Designer is a rich productivity tool that incorporates the BPMN, BPEL and BPEL4People open standards and a set of advanced wizards that make easy it to create business process models and orchestrations quickly. ActiveVOS Server easily scales to meet the needs of enterprises of any size and can be rapidly incorporated into a production J2EE execution environment to meet rigorous performance and availability requirements. With ActiveVOS Server, teams can leverage existing skills and collaborate to develop, deploy and run production business process management applications.