Apache Airflow vs Pega BPM comparison

Apache Airflow is an open-source workflow management system (WMS) that is primarily used to programmatically author, orchestrate, schedule, and monitor data pipelines as well as workflows. The solution makes it possible for you to manage your data pipelines by authoring workflows as directed acyclic graphs (DAGs) of tasks. By using Apache Airflow, you can orchestrate data pipelines over object stores and data warehouses, run workflows that are not data-related, and can also create and manage scripted data pipelines as code (Python). 

Apache Airflow Features

Apache Airflow has many valuable key features. Some of the most useful ones include:

• Smart sensor: In Apache Airflow, tasks are executed sequentially. The smart sensors are executed in bundles, and therefore consume fewer resources.

• Dockerfile: By using Apache Airflow’s dockerfile feature, you can run your business’s Airflow code without having to document and automate the process of running Airflow on a server. 

• Scalability: Because Apache Airflow has a modular architecture and uses a message queue to orchestrate an arbitrary number of workers, you can easily scale it. 

• Plug-and-play operators: With Apache Airflow, you can choose from several plug-and-play operators that are ready to execute your tasks on many third-party services.

Apache Airflow Benefits

There are many benefits to implementing Apache Airflow. Some of the biggest advantages the solution offers include:

• User friendly: Using Apache Airflow requires minimal python knowledge to get started.

• Intuitive user interface: The Apache Airflow user interface enables you to visualize pipelines running in production, monitor progress, and also troubleshoot issues when needed.

• Easy integration: Apache Airflow can easily be integrated with cloud platforms (Google, AWS, Azure, etc).

• Visual DAGs: Apache Airflow’s visual DAGs provide data lineage, which facilitates debugging of data flows and also aids in auditing and data governance. 

• Flexibility: Apache Airflow provides you with several ways to make DAG objects more flexible. At runtime, a context variable is passed to each workflow execution, which is quickly incorporated into an SQL statement that includes the run ID, execution date, and last and next run times.

• Multiple deployment options: With Apache Airflow, you have several options for deployment, including self-service, open source, or a managed service.

• Several data source connections: Apache Airflow can connect to a variety of data sources, including APIs, databases, data warehouses, and more.  

Reviews from Real Users

Below are some reviews and helpful feedback written by PeerSpot users currently using the Apache Airflow solution.

A Senior Solutions Architect/Software Architect says, “The product integrates well with other pipelines and solutions. The ease of building different processes is very valuable to us. The difference between Kafka and Airflow, is that it's better for dealing with the specific flows that we want to do some transformation. It's very easy to create flows.”

An Assistant Manager at a comms service provider mentions, “The best part of Airflow is its direct support for Python, especially because Python is so important for data science, engineering, and design. This makes the programmatic aspect of our work easy for us, and it means we can automate a lot.”

A Senior Software Engineer at a pharma/biotech company comments that he likes Apache Airflow because it is “Feature rich, open-source, and good for building data pipelines.”

Pega BPM is a low-code process automation software product that helps organizations quickly build business applications that deliver the demanded experience by customers. This product is a business process management (BPM), process automation, rapid application development, and low-code development tool.

Pega utilizes business process management (BPM) - a methodology to manage processes and workflows in an organization with the aim to increase work process results. The product implements BPM in the following steps:

• Analysis: Through comprehensive analysis, the processes that can be created or optimized to meet business needs are identified.
  
  
• Design: The design of a process aims to reduce errors and maintain relevant standard operating procedures.
  
  
• Modeling: The process design can be modeled using various software tools.
  
  
• Execution: The process model execution can be governed through a business rules engine.
  
  
• Monitoring: Monitoring is performed to detect any issues and collect relevant data.
  
  
• Optimization: The collected data is used to optimize and improve processes.

Pega BMP utilizes this methodology to automate and simplify operations for companies and improve business agility. The solution can automate business operations such as business rules, mobile application development, reporting, case management, security, integration, and predictive and adaptive analytics. It can be employed on premises and in the cloud and allows for automating services such as accounts, marketing, and sales.

Pega BPM Features

Pega BPM has various features through which businesses can automate processes and reduce operational costs. Some of these features include:

• Adaptive Decision Management: Through the support of data analysis concepts, this product feature allows users to make crucial decisions. It supports the retrieval of data automatically, facilitating real-time decision-making. It also provides the ability to make decisions at all times, depending on changes in the processes.
  
  
• Automatic Code Generation: The programming time at a company can be reduced through this feature, as it generates application codes automatically. The feature offers industry-specific solution frameworks for developing applications and visual development tools, allowing business users to build apps. This enables the simplification of complex business processes by converting them.
  
  
• Pega Omni-channel UI: The user interface (UI) of Pega BPM is a design-once and deploy-anywhere model. This means that any channel can be interfaced with the UI, as designs can be adapted to various parameters, including device, channel, or user.
  
  
• Pega Live Data: This feature of the tool integrates all the business’s data, analyzes it, and summarizes it into formats suitable for presentation. The feature has a caching option, which improves data management by reducing the load on external applications.
  
  
• Pega Situational Layer Cake: Through this feature of the solution, business processes can be adjusted regarding changes in customer type, departments, products, geographies, time, languages, and channels.
  
  
• Pega Pulse: Through Pega Pulse, employees, partners, and customers can collaborate and solve issues simultaneously.

Pega BPM Benefits

Pega BPM has various benefits for businesses. They include the following:

• Accelerates business processes by building applications in a timely manner.
  
  
• Provides automatically tailored screens and forms for customers to improve user experience and engagement.
  
  
• Can be utilized on various sources, including being moved from a data center to the cloud and vice versa.
  
  
• The low-code functionality decreases the need for developer intervention and reduces the costs of outsourcing IT assistance and maintenance.
  
  
• The tool offers a flexible UI that allows users to switch from web to mobile during all times of product usage.
  
  
• The platform offers business scalability incrementation through quick application development.

Reviews from Real Users

Amarender C., a feature lead at a financial services firm, thinks Pega BPM is easy to set up with great documentation and training.

Anoop S., a delivery manager at LanceSoft, rates the product highly because it is user-friendly and has case management and claims management functions; has good documentation and a community portal that help in learning the product and resolving issues.