Reference Code: TA001927BPM Publication Date: June 2010 Author: Sandeep Mishra, Chandranshu Singh, and Vuk Trifkovic

TECHNOLOGY AUDIT

Bonita Open Solution v5.1 BonitaSoft SUMMARY IMPACT Proprietary Business Process Management (BPM) products are usually expensive and complex to deploy. Organizations require a solution that offers essential functionality at attractive prices, be it an enterprise-level implementation for medium-sized entities or one at the department level for large enterprises. The solution should:



Enable business and IT to collaborate easily on process definitions.

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Support directly executable process models.

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Provide a simple, uncluttered UI for process monitoring, administration, and reporting.

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Offer comprehensive system-to-system integration capabilities.

KEY FINDINGS Strengths:

Weaknesses:

Key Facts:

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Standards-based process modeling tool and a simple, intuitive user interface.

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Offers essential process automation functionality at low cost.

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Lacks a dedicated business rules engine.

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Lacks support for process simulation and testing.

i

Supports BPMN 2.0; will offer support for BPEL and XPDL in forthcoming releases.

i

Offers over 80 connectors to enterprise applications.

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TECHNOLOGY AUDIT

OVUM VIEW The high acquisition cost of proprietary BPM solutions makes them inaccessible to many organizations. The licensing cost is a barrier, and the recurring software maintenance/technical support costs may be too high for enterprises as well. A relatively routine BPM deployment can cost a company anywhere from $250,000 to $1 million, with annual support costs in the range of $40,000 to $150,000. In Ovum’s view, for BPM to penetrate all segments of the market, there is a need for products that offer essential functionality at attractive prices. BonitaSoft is a commercial provider of an open source BPM suite. The vendor offers a BPMN2-based visual process modeler, an execution engine, and an administration console user experience inspired by e-mail client interfaces. While BonitaSoft’s BPM product set does not provide end-to-end functionality covered by the familiar proprietary BPM suites, it does enable organizations to model and deploy automated process instances rapidly. The key benefit for organizations is that they can start with a small BPM footprint and address critical pain points at the outset, then scale up as their needs grow. The product can be downloaded from BonitaSoft’s website and deployed free of charge before moving to a paid subscription, if required. The product, currently in version 5.1 but with a version 5.2 release planned for mid-June 2010, was initiated in 2001 at the French National Institute for Research in Computer Science and Control (INRIA) and made available through the OW2 Consortium. Eventually, in 2009 BonitaSoft was founded to explore the product’s commercial potential, attracting $3 million in A series funding from Ventech and Auriga Partners. The BonitaSoft developer community is still maturing, but in Ovum’s opinion the traction gained by the Bonita product will depend primarily on the growth of the community. The product set currently lacks features such as a dedicated business-activity monitoring (BAM) interface, process content management, XPDL support, business rules capabilities, and process simulation. However, Ovum is impressed by the pace of product development at BonitaSoft and believes that given strong community support, Bonita Open Solution will continue to evolve rapidly. In our view, Bonita Open Solution offers a simple and easy-to-use process modeler and user experience interface. In addition, it provides out-of-the-box integration with a variety of enterprise applications. The solution is suitable for a spectrum of organizations: It can serve as a principal BPM system for mid-sized companies, and it has proven its suitability for departmental level implementations at large enterprises. In the future, the company intends to expand its portfolio of connectors and introduce BAM features, which would certainly make the product more competitive. The go-to-market strategy of targeting small to mid-sized projects in organizations should work well for BonitaSoft. However as stated earlier, the growth rate for BonitaSoft will depend on the developer community support. Recommendations



Process automation: Bonita Open Solution is well equipped to meet the process automation and application integration needs of organizations, irrespective of their size and sector of operation. The product’s key differentiator is its ability to build applications based on models quickly and easily.

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Process optimization: The product at present does not lend itself well to the process measurement and optimization needs of organizations.

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Paper-based processes: The product provides a forms builder interface that enables organizations to reduce the amount of manual paper processing, thereby driving efficiency. However, other types of content such as scanned documents, images, audio, and video are not yet supported.

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TECHNOLOGY AUDIT

FUNCTIONALITY SOLUTION OVERVIEW BPM suites should enable organizations to take a holistic view of their processes, which invariably include enterprise systems, content, and people. If properly deployed, BPM helps organizations achieve operational business agility, not only through process automation and optimization, but also by automating the decisionmaking process. This requires a clear separation between processes and the governing business rules framework, as well as bidirectional integration between BPM and a decision support solution comprising business intelligence and an event-processing system. BPM also provides strategic benefits, by enabling organizations to manage their enterprise goals through integration with enterprise architecture solutions. Such an integrated solution would enable real-time monitoring of multiple interrelated processes and suggest corrective measures. Figure 1:

Bonita Open Solution architecture

Source: BonitaSoft

OVUM

However, there is a need for a rational approach to business process management, which in our view means starting with a clear objective and a small deployment footprint. The scope of the solution can be scaled up to other projects and departments to eventually include the entire organization, ideally backed by a BPM center of excellence that has executive sponsorship and equal representation of both business and IT stakeholders. Bonita Open Solution, BonitaSoft’s open source BPM offering available under GPL license, comprises three integrated modules: Bonita Studio, Bonita User Experience, and Bonita Execution Engine.

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Bonita Studio is a graphical tool which allows users to draw business processes, generate form-based Web applications, connect to existing systems, and import or export existing business processes. Bonita Studio uses a Business Process Model Notation (BPMN) 2.0 context palette, enabling process designers to drag and drop process elements, a feature that most present-day BPM tools provide. Process modeling is quick and does not require any coding; business analysts can start designing processes within minutes. Another intuitive feature worth highlighting is process validation: When a user saves a process model, Bonita Studio checks for errors and informs the user where any problems occur before saving the model. The process, step, transition, and logic-gate-level properties need to be defined before execution, thereby eliminating the chance of error. The Bonita Execution Engine can be deployed as a single, centralized server or as a distributed BPM server. It can also be embedded into a BPM application if required. Process models designed using Bonita Studio can be executed on the Bonita Execution Engine, which generates a stand-alone Java-based Web application that runs on any Web application server or J2EE server. Figure 2:

Bonita User Experience

Source: BonitaSoft

OVUM

Bonita User Experience (Figure 2) connects the step actors to the process instances in which they act. From the process participant perspective, the User Experience interface provides a view of pending tasks, provides forms for data input, and shows a history of the cases they were involved in. External users such as clients can also initiate or participate in an automated process through forms presented in a dedicated web application, deployed externally to the Bonita Open Solution environment. The process administrator, who is responsible for managing a set of deployed processes, can monitor as well as interact with existing processes, and can also view process participants’ User Experience GUI. Process developers can view and test the functionality available to administrators as well as participants during the deployment stage.

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TECHNOLOGY AUDIT

SOLUTION ANALYSIS Business Process Modeling Bonita Studio is a visual process modeling environment that allows users to model business processes in BPMN 2.0. These process models can contain Web forms, connections to other enterprise systems, logic gates, and conditional state transitions. Process models can be imported from and exported to other BPMNcompliant systems. Users can design processes by dragging and dropping components from the BPMN context palette. While designing a process in Bonita Studio, users can assign step types, prioritize steps, and define actors associated with a step; define data variables; add timers to delay or trigger steps in a process; and create messages to exchange data among processes. Bonita Studio also includes a wizard-driven form editor that enables users to customize forms for corresponding process steps. This is especially useful for capturing user input in Web-based applications. For each process step that requires manual data input, the wizard automatically creates a default Bonita form based on the defined data variables. Users can change a form’s contents (field order, labels, characteristics, and so forth) as well as its context (for instance, embed the entire form in an existing Web application or a Web page). Bonita Studio offers more than 80 connectors, enabling users to connect a step or a process to third-party enterprise systems. Most of these connectors take specific inputs (directly as a value from the end user or an expression) and trigger the execution of the next step, while some of them also return output back to the process. Connectors can be added by choosing an existing connector shipped with Bonita Studio, selected from the connectors contributed by the BonitaSoft developer community, or created using the connectorbuilding wizard provided. BonitaSoft also enables users to test the connector before the process is executed. User Interaction and Analytics Bonita User Experience enables users to design sets of Web forms to view and interact with processes. Forms can be created with a few clicks and previewed/edited before deployment. Based on user feedback BonitaSoft has redesigned the User Experience portal; it initially had a rather difficult-to-use interface and now offers an easily understandable view inspired by ubiquitous e-mail interfaces. BonitaSoft provides only the basic analytic features when compared with other solutions in the BPM space. The Dashboard feature in the User Experience portal shows a snapshot of the current status of the user’s workload, which includes graphical representation of priorities of all steps requiring user involvement; steps categorized as risky, on track, or overdue; and open and completed steps categorized by priority. The dashboard is configurable, and users can choose from different graph types. The solution currently lacks support for business-activity monitoring (BAM), activity-based costing, and predictive analytics. Developer Community Support While the BonitaSoft community currently has just over 1,000 registered members, it is an active community with numerous contributions from members. The community has helped extend the capabilities of Bonita’s BPM solution. The features available to the community include a member forum, help requests, discussion on future product roadmap, product translations, current development scenario, feedback on existing features, and sharing of new features such as connectors.

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Apart from playing an active role in project evolution, the community has served as a valuable global distribution channel for BonitaSoft, which in Ovum’s view has been instrumental in accelerating its visibility and adoption. BonitaSoft also connects to community members that include users, contributors, partners, and even customers through social media technologies. A mix of traditional community tools such as forums, bug trackers, and so on with social media technologies such as Twitter and Facebook keeps users updated on developments, such as bug-fixes or new features, in real time. Integration with Existing Systems Bonita Open Solution integrates well with existing IT systems. Aided by an active developer community, BonitaSoft has created more than 80 connectors in a short span of time. These connectors enable integration with databases (such as Oracle, MySQL, MS SQL Server), messaging systems, LDAP, ECM suites (such as Alfresco, eXo Platform, Nuxeo), CRM applications (SugarCRM), ETL tools (Talend), BI products (JasperSoft) and social media applications (Twitter, Facebook, Google Calendar). The connectors can be readily downloaded from the BonitaSoft community site. Given the company’s open source roots, the initial focus was on providing connectors for open source products, but the vendor is now looking to integrate with proprietary products as well. Users can also place requests for connectors through the community or create new connectors with the help of Bonita Studio. Once created, a new connector can be placed in an existing Bonita Open Solution category and used as a wizard for future connectors of the same type. Scalability As described in the Implementation section of this Technology Audit, BonitaSoft’s BPM product has been deployed by SMEs as well as by large enterprises in both departmental and organization-wide scenarios. The product scales well horizontally so that the deployment footprint can be extended to meet growing workload demands. With support from partners and system integrators, the company has been able to showcase its abilities in handling large-scale projects in several government entities, wherein hundreds of concurrent users are supported. Licensing Bonita Open Solution is available under GNU General Public License version 2 (GPL v2), which means that the product can be downloaded from code repositories and used free of charge. BonitaSoft derives revenues from solution support and maintenance fees, deployment services, and consulting as well as from custom application development for clients. This enables BonitaSoft to position its BPM offering as a low-cost solution that offers requisite functionality. BonitaSoft’s Contributor Agreement requires transfer of copyright to BonitaSoft, which currently owns the copyright over the entire code base. This means that any interested party may make and distribute alterations to Bonita Open Solution, subject to the restrictions of GPL v2 and BonitaSoft’s copyright.

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TECHNOLOGY AUDIT

PRODUCT STRATEGY BonitaSoft targets medium to large enterprises across industry verticals. Most of the company’s customers come from the banking, insurance, manufacturing, and public sectors. Southern Europe and the US are the primary operating regions for BonitaSoft; the vendor plans to extend coverage to Western Europe and Latin America over the next two years. BonitaSoft’s clients include HSBC, Societe Generale, the French Ministry of Agriculture, and the Government of the Canary Islands to name a few. Table 1:

Comparison of BonitaSoft’s current support offerings

Support level Silver

Gold

Platinum

Description                     

Maximum of 3 incidents per year Web support Guaranteed response time acknowledging incident tickets Access to a certified version of the software Upgrade notifications Access to support forum and bug-tracking tool Unlimited incidents per year Web support 24-hour phone support (working days) Guaranteed response time acknowledging incident tickets Access to a certified version of the software Upgrade notifications Access to support forum and bug-tracking tool Unlimited incidents per year Web support 24-hour phone support (working days) Guaranteed response time acknowledging incident tickets Guaranteed diagnosis turnaround times Access to a certified version of the software Upgrade notifications Access to support forum and bug-tracking tool

Source: BonitaSoft

OVUM

BonitaSoft earns 60% of its revenues from direct sales, mostly through project-based, department-level deployments in private sector organizations. The remaining 40% comes from partner-driven sales to the public sector. BonitaSoft has implementation and distribution partnerships with major local and global system integrators including Bull, Smile, and Ancud. The vendor also has technical partnership agreements with other open source vendors such as JasperSoft, SugarCRM, Alfresco, and xWiki. BonitaSoft’s OEM agreements include Talend (OEMs Bonita Open Solution with Talend’s Master Data Management product) and eXo Platform (integrates Bonita Open Solution into eXo’s document management module).

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Typical cost for an entry-level deployment over a 4 CPU core with the Silver support contract is €3,500, of which €2,000 is support fees and €1,500 is for a day’s deployment consulting. Large-scale deployments that require a 32 CPU core with Platinum support could cost around €50.000. However, since Bonita Open Solution is available under a GPL v2 license, it can be used free of charge should a customer choose to support its own deployment. The vendor releases two major versions of the product each year, with versions 5.2 and 5.3 scheduled for release in June 2010 and October 2010 respectively. BonitaSoft intends to further increase its connector base and include connectors to Microsoft and SAP products in its portfolio, including connectors for Microsoft SharePoint 2010 and Visio 2010. BonitaSoft also plans to enhance the business rules functionality through a connector for JBoss rules, and provide dynamic BAM capabilities in its forthcoming release in June 2010.

IMPLEMENTATION Bonita Open Solution can be deployed quickly. A pilot project can be run in less than a week, with the help of a single internal or external resource (which could be either process developers and/or administrators). The technical users need to possess some basic Java skills, while business users don’t require any special skills. The product can be implemented at department level within one to three weeks, requiring a maximum of three dedicated resources, while enterprise-wide implementations can take three to eight weeks, requiring a maximum of six resources. BonitaSoft provides professional support and consulting services to clients during implementation. In the post-implementation phase, the company provides hands-on product training through lectures and use case scenarios. Bonita Open Solution can be deployed in two modes: on-premises or hosted. While Bonita Open Solution can be hosted on cloud platforms, it is currently not available in a multi-tenant, SaaS mode. The product can run on any operating system that supports Java including Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X. Supported application servers include Tomcat, JOnAS, JBoss, and Weblogic, but the solution is not dependent on any third-party products. Government of the Canary Islands: The Government of the Canary Islands replaced its existing proprietary BPM solution with Bonita Open Solution to reduce operating costs. Bonita was chosen to provide support for the e-government applications developed by the Canary Islands’ government IT teams, system integrators, and other third-party solution providers. The product has been deployed over an 8 CPU cluster. The BPM engine runs on top of a JBoss application server, in a Linux environment, with an Oracle database. This is a large-scale deployment, with the ability to support thousands of concurrent users over the Web. Societe Generale: Societe Generale has chosen Bonita Open Solution as the platform for its internal ticketing application for support requests, replacing the existing manually programmed application. The solution is a stand-alone Web application in which the Bonita BPM engine is embedded and currently supports 50 concurrent users. The deployment configuration includes Tomcat, Linux over a four CPU core, and the MySQL database. The client experienced a significant reduction in response time for service requests.

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Chronoexpres: Chronoexpres, a subsidiary of Spanish Postal, which was in the process of refactoring its information systems, needed a BPM solution on top of its existing logistics application to manage internal and external processes. Bonita Open Solution has been deployed on a four CPU Linux server and runs on a JBoss application server. The BPM application is being used by hundreds of customers and internal Chronoexpres agents. Table 2:

Contact Details

BonitaSoft 31, rue Gustave Eiffel 38000 Grenoble France Tel: +33 6 64 84 00 18 E-mail: [email protected] www.bonitasoft.com Source: BonitaSoft

OVUM

Headquarters

Australian Sales Office

End-user Sales Office (USA)

Important Notice

Shirethorn House, 37/43 Prospect Street, Kingston upon Hull, HU2 8PX, UK Tel: +44 (0)1482 586149 Fax: +44 (0)1482 323577

Level 46, Citigroup Building, 2 Park Street, Sydney, NSW, 2000, Australia Tel: + 61 (02) 8705 6960 Fax: + 61 (02) 8705 6961

245 Fifth Avenue, 4th Floor, New York, NY 10016, USA Tel: +1 212 652 5302 Fax: +1 212 202 4684

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