Oracle BPM Reviews

We have used Oracle BPM on projects involving, financial customer on-boarding, accounts payable, loan origination, and capital expenditure approval.

On a recent project, we were able to seamlessly integrate multiple ERPs into a process. On the same project, we integrated content images and metadata from Oracle's WebCenter Content into the process and its user interfaces. Using BAM, the customer now sees key performance indicators they need to make decisions (e.g., revenue saved through discount achievement for AP invoices).

Oracle BPM is easy to use for both the business and developers.  Both personas design process models in a common format, tailored specifically to their skills.

Often overlooked in software evaluations, the integration to underlying databases and applications is an essential element on almost every BPM application. Oracle BPM's tool for service and application integration is the best on the market to accomplish this.

Being able to view and manage the environment is essential during the entire lifecycle of a project. Oracle BPM makes it easy for process stakeholders to manage and optimize their processes.

Oracle BPM Suite is based on the widely used industry standards that both the business and technical people are already familiar and comfortable with.

Specific features that we have found valuable include:

• Process modeling - fully supports BPMN 2.0 palette of tasks, gateways and events for both the business and technical sides.
• Business rules - Business rules can either be embedded as an integral part of a BPM process or are invoked by the process.
• Integration - Oracle BPM is layered on top of Oracle's SOA platform, a proven standards-based approach to exposing and integrating databases and backend services using Java EE Connector Architecture (JCA) adapters.
• Metrics Reporting - a key aspect of Oracle BPM is its ability to gather key performance indicators as work items flow through the process. These metrics are easily surfaced in dashboard reports in both the out of the box end user Workspace tool and its greatly improved Business Activity Monitoring (BAM) tool that comes with the product.

Although it is a robust product, its learning curve can be steep without having the proper training and mentoring on the first project.

As with most BPM projects interaction with people is a key element. Creating user interfaces the end users see and interact with as work item instances travel through process can be challenging. If ADF is used, most companies struggle due to its complexity, steep learning curve, and the need to tune it for performance. The web form design tool in Composer (currently an OEM product from Frevvo) is simple to use for citizen developers, but can be lacking in the functionality most projects need.

To get around these issues, the architecture is flexible enough to allow the use of other UI technologies. On new projects we now create and edit forms using Angular JS using REST services. This has made our developers much more productive and the forms perform better.

Version 12c of Oracle BPM, which came out in 2014, took a while to gain maturity. We have now worked through the initial bugs and 12.2.1.3 is a robust release. Oracle BAM that comes with the product has been greatly improved in this version of the product.

Oracle BPM's runtime architecture scales quite well. Each Oracle BPM project is deployed as a composite EAR file that runs in a compiled manner. The environment can be clustered.

Customer Service:

Customer service is good overall. The escalation procedures work and when they say "7/24" support they mean it.

Technical Support:

Other than the issues encountered in 12c initially, the issues have been handled well by customer support. When the need to escalate has occurred, tickets were escalated and resolved.

Initial setup requires the knowledge of someone familiar with Oracle SOA Suite and WebLogic.

On an initial project, consider getting outside mentors to work with your team. These mentors can be in-house or outside consultants. The vendor is not required in most cases.

We use this solution to offer a business process management platform with user-friendly self-service capabilities and powerful MIs.

This solution is a one-stop-shop platform for all business workflow needs, using our own middle-tier and front ends. OBPM is used only for the engine behind the platform.

We rolled out a business process management platform using this solution.

This solution has given us a quick time to market, the ability to integrate with the rest of the corporate applications, and the ability to hire talent in low-cost locations.

The most valuable features of this solution are the robust workflow engine, service-oriented architecture, and BPM modeling capability.

The API interfaces could be more robust. Existing APIs in the product need to be fine-tuned, made more robust and flexible for adoption.

The product should be made available with all its current capabilities addressing known shortcomings on the cloud. 

I would like to see current out-of-the-box MIs enhanced, offering more interactive capability.

Introduce machine learning and AI capabilities.

Change the front end and the ability to offer forms for business users.

The licensing model is good.

We used this platform for some of the sales code related transactions we were doing, as well as to manage the process from the backend system to the front-end system. 

One of the most valuable features of Oracle BPM is the workflow itself. It is quite intuitive. 

Oracle BPM could probably be improved with respect to the cost. When you are using this product, it'll be a bit costlier for the ROA. I think they should do some discounts on these products, especially for the licenses. 

I used this solution for three years. 

This product is stable. 

Oracle BPM is scalable. 

In our organization, there are 200 users of this solution. 

I have contacted Oracle's technical support, and I didn't face any problems during the process. Their support is quite intuitive and customer-friendly. 

We were previously using Camunda BPM. 

This solution is easy to install. We have a dedicated team for installation and configuring these applications. We never face any issues, and if there are any version conflicts or anything, we can reach out to Oracle's support. Our complete team is comprised of 60 people, but our Oracle BPM team is 10-15 guys. They are a combination of developers and infrastructure support guys. 

We implemented this solution through an in-house team. 

The licensing for this product is very costly. We pay for a yearly license to use Oracle BPM. 

I rate Oracle BPM a nine out of ten. I would definitely recommend Oracle BPM to others. 

In version 11 our primary use case was for traditional BPM on business processes and in the latest version, we implemented case management files. We stopped using it around four months ago but when we did use it, we used it on a daily basis in production.

Our company is based around Oracle processes. It provides a lot of flexibility in its processes. 

I can't say something specific that is especially valuable about Oracle BPM. Overall, it is a very good platform. 

We have had some issues with version migration, from one version of processes to another. We would have to call Oracle Services but on a day to day, we didn't have any issues. 

I would like for the design of the migration of process instances from one version to another to be more visual. It would be very helpful to have visual tools in order to design the equivalence of tasks and process payload between versions. Until now bpm database migration has been needed.

I would also like more UI flexibility, the ADF framework is too Oracle-specific. 

I have been using Oracle BPM for around four to five years.

It is stable. Normally, any issues we faced with stability had to do with version migration.

We had around 300 - 400 direct users using this solution. We required around five people to support the product. 

We haven't spoken to their technical support directly. 

We did not previously use a different solution. After Oracle BPM I used Camunda. Camunda has a different approach. Oracle is heavier in the sense of requirements but it's better for a complex organization in terms of integration to the environment.

I would rate it an eight out of ten. I would give it this rating because it's stable and it's well integrated with the Oracle platform but there is always room for improvement. 

We use Oracle BPM for development in a test environment. It is not used in production.

The best part about this solution is that the feature set is complete. When you compare this to other engines, it is very complete.

The Workspace is a full, rich application where most users can find what they want. It shows them a list of their work.

The analytics, activity guide, and advanced features like correlation ID are very good.

The stability of this solution deteriorates when more than one thousand instances are concurrently active.

The Oracle database is not an easy product to maintain.

I would like to see the next version of this solution be simpler and more transparent about what is happening at the level of the database. This would allow users to better understand problems.

The technology that is being used for the UI needs to be updated to make it quicker. Oracle is using the ADF technology, which is a very heavy framework. Oracle cloud uses the JET framework, which is much faster and consumes fewer resources.

Oracle needs to return some of their focus to the Fusion products, rather than concentrating so heavily on cloud-based technologies.

Overall, the engine and the UI both have to be made lighter.

We are only using this solution for development, so we do not have many users. However, I know about some of our customers, and one of them has approximately two thousand users. At peak times, there are approximately one thousand concurrent users.

Sometimes a user will have thirty instances, which means that during the peak, there may be thirty thousand instances active in the engine. This level of scalability, however, requires a solid implementation by a team with a lot of experience.

Working with Oracle support is not easy. First of all, most of the time they want you to have a sample case or scenario that they can follow up on. However, in a production environment, you cannot create a sample scenario. For example, you see some errors that are the result of a heavy workload, but this is not something that you can reproduce. It is impossible. Also, these are the kinds of cases that you need support for.

At the same time, if the issue is minor, such as something that you need to set in the configuration, or policies that you need to set in the environment, then the support is ok.

Ultimately, in a huge production environment, the support is definitely not mature enough.

This solution is not used in our production area because of our licensing, and also because of a change in policy whereby Oracle is pushing its customers to the cloud. We are not interested in moving to the cloud and are now instead considering Camunda BPM.

My understanding with Camunda is that the engine is very small, and is not resource-intensive. It requires less in terms of administration. It seems to me that if I have a lot of users then it will be more stable than Oracle. Also, the maintenance will be easier because the application is smaller.

The license will be cheaper for Camunda because, with Oracle, you need to have the database, Weblogic server, the BPM server, and lots of other products.

Finally, I have looked at Camunda’s performance on Youtube and other sites, and it seems to be better than that of Oracle.

If you have an enterprise system then one person is required to maintain it, full-time. Oracle database is not easy to maintain, and in an enterprise application, you need to have a DBA. Normally, if you have one person for Weblogic and one person for the database, it’s enough.

The length of time required for deployment depends on the number of different instances. For example, if you want to have forty BPM and forty processes then the deployment will take a long time.

At the moment we have a deployment of forty instances, and it takes about twenty minutes to run. Most of the time, we need to restart the server because of some kind of error, such as a memory problem. This is absolutely not good in a production environment. The product is not yet mature enough in this regard.

The price of this solution, or with another like Camunda, does not matter because if the organization is rich enough to use a BPM then money is not the issue.

My advice for anybody who is considering this system is that if they have a good and knowledgable team to support them then they can depend on Oracle. However, if they want to learn this product, for example by going to Oracle university, and then go into production, they are going to be disappointed very soon. As soon as the system reaches a large number of users, everything changes. No information that they get from Oracle university will help them. The only thing that can help is experience and a deep understanding of the environment. Finding a problem may require going beyond the BPM and deep into the database.

This is a product that you can count on. It is an enterprise-level solution that is suitable for very large BPM, and it fits well with the Diagramo system.

When it comes to maturity, this is suitable for an enterprise and I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. Other solutions, such as Camunda, may not fit all of the needs of an enterprise. On the other hand, for stability and high availability, I would rate this solution a six out of ten.

Overall, I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We mainly use this solution as a business processor management system. We use this solution to develop internal documentation including our customer internal agreements and verification of contractors. We also use it for internal company orders and intellectual property management.

Oracle BPM is not used directly by our customers. It is a tool for developers. Oracle tried to make it a tool for business users too but from our point of view, this positioning is wrong. For example, one of the critical features that is not working well enough, is migration of processes when you deploy a new version of processes.

Every time we roll out a new version of processes, we have to migrate to a new process. The process of this migration was not very smooth. We later decided that it would be easier for us to stop all processes, deploy a new version and then restart. 

We use our own interfaces because the standard interface was not sufficient for our customers. We tried the business rules, but after some time, we stopped using them. Right now it's mainly the process management functionality that we use.

I have been using this solution for six years. 

This is a very stable solution.

The scalability of this solution depends on your architecture. The processor management system is quite fast and scalable. We have 10 developers using this solution and it supports 25,000 users.

We consulted a few times with local Oracle support. In some cases, they were able to assist us. In other cases, they gave direction where most customers find the answers. 

I am not very happy with customer support, but it's not the worst that I have experienced.

Neutral

The initial setup is not very easy, as with most of Oracle's products. Some aspects of the setup were not very clear and it took a lot of time to solve challenges. Setting up the system took one week  but we had to come back and change settings many times.

This solution is very expensive. You are charged per license and an additional 20% for support. 

This is a solution with many features that work really well. It is stable. Oracle misjudged how users will use this product and are trying to fix it using Oracle Process Cloud. I would advise others to look for a cloud version if possible.

Oracle BPM will require you to do a lot of development. If you don't have a strong team of developers and administrators, I would not recommend this solution. It is a complex and very powerful solution for people who know what they're doing.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten. 

We are system integrators and we are using this solution to build solutions for our clients. Our clients are enterprise companies.

We selected this product not only for the BPM but for the entire package. This includes the Utilities Stack, which has the BPM as part of it, the out-of-the-box implementations for utility business, and utility domains have a ready-made implementation.

We customized this implementation to provide the requirements, not making a complete solution from scratch for the utility company. This was the main reason we selected Oracle Utilities with Oracle BPM as part of it.

From my knowledge of this solution, I don't see that the Oracle BPM includes features such as the growth of discovery and process mining.

Technical support could be better.

In the next release, I would like to see the growth of discovery and process mining features added. Also, the ability to be containerized, and to support the cloud-native deployments.

I have been familiar with this solution for approximately two to three years.

This solution is stable.

It is a scalable solution. I think that new versions of Oracle BPM that work in the cloud-native environment, but our version is not cloud-native. It's not a containerized environment.

Technical support is not the best, but it is okay.

Previously, we used webMethods BPM from Software AG. We used it for building solutions for a Telecom company and for managing their enterprise applications.  We used it for creating product applications for managing their enterprise requirements.

Its price is high and I would say that this solution is expensive.

I am interested in the open-source BPM with official support. When we need the BPM, we prefer to use this approach. 

We would use this open-source BPM based on budget and the scale and the number of transactions per second, we would decide if we need professional support or rely on community support.

I would rate this solution an eight out of ten.

We position Oracle BPM Suite as central process implementation and documentation platform, where the automation part is the more important one. With process automation media breaches can be avoided, business become more agile as well as transparent and existing process can become more efficiently.

The tool gives us capabilities to significantly increase the transparency regarding business processes and their corresponding executions.

In addition, Oracle BPM Suite allows Business and IT teams to talk about the same things, the business processes, and allows collaboration to document, implement, and optimize the corresponding models.

One of the most valuable features of the solution is the capability to allow the implementation of static processes, using the standard BPMN 2.0 notation, and also to address not straightforward, dynamic process scenarios, by providing features for Case Management (Adaptive Case Management, ACM).

To increase the transparency of the execution models to the overall business processes, BPM Suite provides capabilities to document and model the corresponding high-level business processes (Enterprise Map and Value Chains) and the definition of respective KPIs. This can be done using a lightweight, browser-based tool (BPM Composer). With this, it is basically possible to keep and visualize the big picture, which is often missing when doing BPM projects.

In addition, the platform comes with a very solid foundation, which also allows for the implementation of consistent integrated service base.

The capabilities for building consistent integrative solutions, coming with a broad spectrum of connectivity adapters to integrate with third party enterprise information systems, is key for building flexible BPM applications.

Support for Decision Modelling Notation (DMN). There is a Business Rule Engine available, but this is not DMN-compatible.

No.

No.

The level of technical support is satisfactory. It depends highly on the affected components and on the way the error can be described, and on what information can be provided.

There is also a lot of documentation available. The development community is also responsive and provides a lot of information in the form of blog posts, webcasts, and presentations.

No.

How complex the initial setup is depends on the requirements.

If you need a highly available, clustered solution (Multiple Nodes), then it's more complex than only creating a single node instance.

If you do it for the first time, it seems to be very complex, but there's documentation available (Enterprise Deployment Guide), which describes the needed setup steps on a very detailed level.

It is necessary to evaluate the requirements regarding platform usage and the main operation area of the platform. A topology blueprint should be created and validated against the following questions:

• How many instances do you expect per day/month/year?
• What is the average amount of data?
• Should the environment have High Availability?
• What kind of integrations/processes will you have - stateless or stateful, long running processes derived from the requirements, and evaluated at the very beginning?

Depending on that, the sizing for the environments should be done.

Yes, Camunda BPM, IBM Process Server, and Appian.

Collecting requirements and being clear what is needed is key to creating a scalable, robust, and future-oriented environment.

Oracle BPM Suite can be used to automate parts of a company's business processes to increase operational efficiency. In addition, the high-level business processes and KPIs, which are important for specific processes, can be documented. But, without a clear, integrated service architecture, BPM cannot be implemented successfully. You have to think about your processes, on the one hand, and on the needed functionalities provided as Services, based on data from the backend systems.

To ensure robustness and easy changeability of the developed services and components, my recommendation is to set up a Continuous Integration (CI) environment as a first step in every project.

The CI environment is the central platform for automated test executions as well as for deployment automation and is needed to ensure development efficiency and agility with respect to changes in existing components.

As a last point, I would like to mention that BPM Suite needs a proper operation concept. It is essential to maintain the platform. You should also think of retention times for the runtime data and which information needs to be kept, e.g., to comply with legal regulations.