We want to start building BPM projects in our company (core banking). After searching and comparing some products, we decided to choose between Intalio or JBPM.
Now, we want to know exact advantages and disadvantages of these products. I know that choosing one of these depends on our projects, however I interested in the general overview on these solutions.
Intalio BPMS is by no means "Zero Code", but it does provide a much more complete package for building sophisticated human task and service orchestration applications.
In my experience, jBPM has typically been more focused on Java developers who want a Java-based embedded workflow solution. Although jBPM has been evolving quite a lot, it doesn't provide the same level of functionality and support out of the box.
For example,
Intalio provides drag-and-drop authoring and integration of Tibco General Interface (GI) AJAX forms within their Eclipse-based designer, which allows someone with fairly limited JavaScript knowledge and a DOM reference to build rich and interactive forms. The latest version of their BPMS provides enhanced rendering on mobile devices.
Intalio provides an easy to use graphical tool inside the designer that provides the ability to easily transform data, create messages, variables, conditions, etc.
Intalio provides a sophisticated workflow suite that provides user authentication, task management, an administrative console, user dashboards etc.
Intalio will also offer (for a fee) an integrated BIRT based reporting tool, a Drools based business rules engine, integration with LifeRay, Alfresco etc.
It's also worth keeping in mind that Intalio has had over 10 years in BPM, a strong management team, and an enterprise grade support infrastructure (ticketing system, phone support, etc).
Full disclosure: I run a VAR and System Integrator that offers Intalio consulting, training etc.
What about licensing? Are you looking for a pure open source project? I guess that if you are working for a bank that matters a lot. Then, are you planning to integrate the BPM solution with the rest of the infrastructure in the long run? are you planning to embed the engine in an existing application? Advantages and Disadvantages depends on what are you trying to achieve and how you look at the products/projects.
Using a BMPS to build a demo-able version of your idea sounds interesting. I will suggest to go for Intalio|BPMS. We used the same tool for the vary same purpose, a configurable, demo-able product for on-boarding management. It was quick (After a few hiccups). I got a few tips for you which may help you in choosing and developing:
Keep your approach simple, use existing user-interface (they are customizable), use simple user management (intalio offers file based and LDAP), if your user pages carry less amount of data use Intalio's default form-saving approach.
Use tibco|GI pages (default feature) instead of designing your pages in JSP. User JS and Jquery to give the WOW factor.
Use small processes, instead of using one long process. While demo, you can change them and deploy again in front of your customer, its impact is boom !!
GREAT SUPPORT FROM INTALIO COMMUNITY AND PAID-SUPPORT.
Disclaimer : I have never used JBPM. I am a big fan of Intalio.
I would recommend Intalio for Quick work and Everyday changing activities, as Designer is more friendly and mature than jBPM. However if there are long and highly customer specific requirements, which are not met through bpmn, I would recommend jBPM as it is closure to programmers. I also consider Intalio and jBPM integration as needed, as at the end it is a Web Services talking to each other.
Intalio BPM validates the transformation methodology and helps the business and address real life business challenges to overcome in simplified manner. The best open source BPM tool which reduces the risk of bringing in new technology by low cost evaluation and alignment with business need.
My experience is strongest with Intalio BPMS, so I am likely a little biased. I think Intalio's main advantage over JBPM is its ability to leverage the work of your entire team, including the stakeholders and analysts. Whereas JBPM is strong and focuses on being usable by developers, Intalio BPMS can be used by analysts to capture business requirements and layout the process according to business requirements. The new collaboration server capabilities even let the stakeholders who are not creating the process check on progress and make comments. This reduces the errors that your developers have as they implement the business requirements.
Given your short list and that you are working in the banking domain, I would recommend to also consider Eclipse Stardust (http://www.eclipse.org/stardust/) if you have not already. Stardust is relatively new to the open source world and part of the Eclipse release train. It is a mature and comprehensive open source BPMS under the Eclipse public license (EPL) featuring an end user portal and HTML5 process modeler. Its commercial version has hundreds of installation in the financial services domain.
Ohloh statistics (@see https://www.ohloh.net/p/eclipse-stardust):
- 8,331 commits made by 39 contributors representing 2,538,774 lines of code
- mostly written in Java with an average number of source code comments
- young, but established codebase maintained by a very large development team
- estimated 726 years of effort (COCOMO model)
In comparission also see https://www.ohloh.net/p/jbpm Not sure why the statistics are not available for Intalio.
