On the Radar: Alfresco advances
content-driven approach to BPM
Alfresco Activiti BPM solution
Publication Date: 22 Dec 2016
Saurabh Sharma
|
Product code: IT0022-000870
On the Radar: Alfresco advances content-driven approach to BPM
Summary
Catalyst
Alfresco Activiti is Alfresco’s business process management (BPM) solution aimed at both business
and IT users. Its integration with Alfresco One and other enterprise content management (ECM)
platforms, and process and data modeling capabilities align with the requirements of use cases
involving content-driven process applications.
Key messages
 “Ease of use” for business users is a core attribute of Alfresco Activiti.
 Adoption of Activiti as a “stand-alone” BPM solution is growing and it is increasingly used as a
lightweight BPM solution alongside proprietary (commercial), resource-intensive BPM
implementations.
 It can be deployed on-premise or in public or private cloud environments.
 In the first phase of its development, Alfresco Activiti has evolved into a BPM solution offering
substantial capabilities in key areas, such as process and data modeling, collaboration and
task management, process monitoring, and multi-tenancy and cloud deployment.
Ovum view
BPM vendors that have strengthened process-centric and performance-related capabilities of their
offerings have struggled to cater to the ease-of-use aspect from a business user (business analyst, for
example) perspective. Over the years, several BPM suites have become a bloated combination of
capabilities supporting structured and unstructured processes, dynamic case management, and
collaboration and task management.
Many enterprises do not have an appetite for resource-intensive and complex BPM
implementations/projects and prefer a lightweight BPM solution offering greater agility. Alfresco Activiti
offers a simple approach to content-driven process management and does not rely on heavy-handed
process or data modeling.
Recommendations for enterprises
Why put Alfresco Activiti on your radar?
Alfresco has followed a balanced approach to product development, with a good mix of features and
capabilities catering to the requirements of both business and IT users. Alfresco Activiti offers a
simple approach to process and data modeling, and supports collaboration between business and IT
users for rapid process prototyping and iteration. Alfresco Activiti’s value proposition is attractive for
enterprises that need a business-user-friendly, lightweight BPM solution with easy to use design and
modeling tools enabling orchestration and management of content-driven processes. IT users can
exploit Alfresco Activiti for performance-centric, agile BPM use cases aimed at developing contentdriven process applications that would otherwise require cost- and resource-intensive BPM projects to
be delivered using a commercial and broader BPM suite.
© Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
Page 2
On the Radar: Alfresco advances content-driven approach to BPM
Highlights
Background
Alfresco was founded in 2005 and is headquartered in Maidenhead, UK and San Mateo, California.
As a major open source enterprise content management (ECM) and business process management
(BPM) vendor, it has more than 2,000 customers and about 11 million users. A major share of
Alfresco’s customer base is accounted for by government, financial services, healthcare, and
manufacturing industries.
Alfresco launched the commercial version of its open source Activiti BPM engine in early 2014,
followed by significant advances in 2015, including support for cloud deployment, better integration
with content repositories, greater control over task management, dynamic business process modeling
notation (BPMN) service, and management of business rules via spreadsheet-type decision tables.
Current position
Alfresco has a growing BPM customer base, including customers that have graduated from using its
ECM platform. Alfresco competes head-on with open source BPM vendors, including jBPM,
Bonitasoft, Camunda, and ProcessMaker, and is gaining momentum via adoption for agile and
lightweight BPM uses cases in enterprises that were already using a commercial and broader BPM
suite.
Alfresco Activiti offers two approaches to process modeling: an easy-to-use Step Editor, and a BPMN
2.0 “drag and drop” style process modeler. Users without a knowledge of the BPMN 2.0 specification
can use Step Editor to model a business process via a sequence of simple steps. One of the key
features of Alfresco Activiti version 1.5 is that it allows any database to be modeled as an object,
which enables users to query a database and retrieve relevant information for use in a business
process. The latest version also introduces API support for custom data sources. Integration with Box
and Google Drive allows users to add/push content and meta data into/out from a process. Activiti
version 1.5 includes rich documentation capabilities enabling users to document process content and
flow.
Alfresco has included a provision to wrap up process definitions and supporting assets (forms and
decision tables) and expose them to a select group of users. This obviously helps simplify the
prototyping of core business processes, but more importantly it enables process modelers to iterate
faster, based on input from users. Alfresco Activiti was the first product from Alfresco that used the
AngularJS framework as a component of its application framework for process console, process
designer, form designer, and process runtime. This was a good choice because AngularJS is wellsuited to the type of content-driven and process-intensive applications developed using Alfresco One
and Alfresco Activiti.
In terms of product development and roadmap, Alfresco is focusing on expanding the features and
capabilities in a range of areas, including reporting automation, bulk processing, enterprise single
sign-on (SSO), and ECM integration. Activiti version 2.0, which is scheduled to be released in the first
half of 2017, will introduce the version 6 engine, allowing the use of non-relational data stores, such
as NoSQL databases with a more dynamic management of process instances, and direct
interpretation of BPMN.
© Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
Page 3
On the Radar: Alfresco advances content-driven approach to BPM
Lastly, it continues to be a lightweight, embeddable process engine with low resource usage. Alfresco
Activiti version 1.5 offers process analytics, reporting, and flow charts for monitoring the performance
and efficiency of processes. We expect Alfresco to focus on enriching the analytics capabilities of its
BPM solution to cater to a range of case management use cases, especially those relying on the
“context of content”.
Data sheet
Key facts
Table 1: Data sheet: Alfresco
Product name
Alfresco Activiti
Product classification
BPM solution
Version number
1.5
Release date
August 2016
Industries covered
All
Geographies covered
All
Relevant company sizes
All
Licensing options
Subscription
URL
https://www.alfresco.com/
Routes to market
Direct and via partners
Company headquarters
Maidenhead, UK and San
Mateo, California, US
Number of employees
400
Source: Ovum
Appendix
On the Radar
On the Radar is a series of research notes about vendors bringing innovative ideas, products, or
business models to their markets. Although On the Radar vendors may or may not be always ready
for prime time, they bear watching for their potential impact on markets and could be suitable for
certain enterprise and public sector IT organizations.
Author
Saurabh Sharma, Senior Analyst, Infrastructure Solutions
[email protected]
Ovum Consulting
We hope that this analysis will help you make informed and imaginative business decisions. If you
have further requirements, Ovum’s consulting team may be able to help you. For more information
about Ovum’s consulting capabilities, please contact us directly at [email protected].
© Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
Page 4
On the Radar: Alfresco advances content-driven approach to BPM
Copyright notice and disclaimer
The contents of this product are protected by international copyright laws, database rights and other
intellectual property rights. The owner of these rights is Informa Telecoms and Media Limited, our
affiliates or other third party licensors. All product and company names and logos contained within or
appearing on this product are the trademarks, service marks or trading names of their respective
owners, including Informa Telecoms and Media Limited. This product may not be copied, reproduced,
distributed or transmitted in any form or by any means without the prior permission of Informa
Telecoms and Media Limited.
Whilst reasonable efforts have been made to ensure that the information and content of this product
was correct as at the date of first publication, neither Informa Telecoms and Media Limited nor any
person engaged or employed by Informa Telecoms and Media Limited accepts any liability for any
errors, omissions or other inaccuracies. Readers should independently verify any facts and figures as
no liability can be accepted in this regard – readers assume full responsibility and risk accordingly for
their use of such information and content.
Any views and/or opinions expressed in this product by individual authors or contributors are their
personal views and/or opinions and do not necessarily reflect the views and/or opinions of Informa
Telecoms and Media Limited.
© Ovum. All rights reserved. Unauthorized reproduction prohibited.
Page 5
CONTACT US
www.ovum.com
[email protected]
INTERNATIONAL OFFICES
Beijing
Dubai
Hong Kong
Hyderabad
Johannesburg
London
Melbourne
New York
San Francisco
Sao Paulo
Tokyo