Camunda 7 Migration Archives | Camunda https://camunda.com/blog/tag/camunda-7-migration/ Workflow and Decision Automation Platform Fri, 18 Apr 2025 19:25:24 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://camunda.com/wp-content/uploads/2022/02/Secondary-Logo_Rounded-Black-150x150.png Camunda 7 Migration Archives | Camunda https://camunda.com/blog/tag/camunda-7-migration/ 32 32 Migrating Solutions from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8—A Strategy Update https://camunda.com/blog/2025/02/migrating-solutions-camunda-7-camunda-8-strategy-update/ Fri, 28 Feb 2025 11:00:00 +0000 https://camunda.com/?p=129811 We want to make migration to Camunda 8 as easy as we can for you. Read on to learn the latest journey and new strategies you can take to get there.

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With the EOL (end of life) of the Camunda 7 CE (Community Edition) in October 2025, we get a lot of requests around migrating existing solutions based on Camunda 7 to Camunda 8.

Camunda 8 is not a direct drop-in replacement for Camunda 7, meaning a simple library swap is insufficient—your solution must be adapted. This post outlines the typical migration journey, available tooling to assist migration, and important timeline considerations.

We have recently adjusted our migration strategy based on learnings from the past year(s), so this information may differ from what you have seen before.

But let’s go step-by-step.

The migration journey

Most of our customers go through the following journey, which is also the basis of our just refreshed migration guide that walks you through that journey in detail.

A diagram of the migration journey from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8

Some solutions are easier to migrate and may not require a full transition process. If your solution adheres to Camunda best practices, does not require data migration, and does not involve complex parallel run scenarios, migration might get relatively straightforward.

A diagram of a simpler migration journey from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8

This blog post will not go into all the details of those journeys, which is what the migration guide itself does—but to give you an idea, the “orient yourself” phase describes how to:

When to migrate?

It goes without saying that any new projects should be started using Camunda 8.

For existing Camunda 7 solutions, consider the following support timeline:

  • Camunda 7 CE (Community Edition) will reach EOL in October 2025, with a final release (v7.24) on Oct 14, 2025. No further Camunda 7 CE releases will occur after this date. The GitHub repository will be archived, and issues/pull requests will be closed.
  • Camunda 7 EE (Enterprise Edition) customers will continue to receive security patches and bug fixes until at least 2030.

Although there is some urgency to start planning migration, you still have time to execute it effectively.

There is a second aspect to the timeline. Camunda 8 is a completely rearchitected platform, meaning some features are still being reintroduced. If your solution depends on features not yet available, you may need to wait for the appropriate Camunda 8 version. Prominent examples are task listeners (planned for 8.8) or the business key (planned for 8.9). We are further running an architecture streamlining initiative to improve the core architecture, which will be released with Camunda 8.8. This introduces a new, harmonized API. Hence, unless you have time pressure or momentum to lose, we generally recommend waiting for 8.8 to happen and consider 8.8 or 8.9 as ideal candidates to migrate to.

Check the public feature roadmap to see when your required features will be available.

Feature-timeline

That said, it is important to note that targeting for example the 8.9 release doesn’t mean you wait for it to happen and postpone migration planning. Many preparatory steps—analysis, budgeting, and project planning—should begin as soon as possible. Migration tasks can often be performed in advance or using early alpha versions of upcoming releases.

Preparedness-timeline

Migration tooling

To support migration, we have several tools available, most importantly:

These are the tools our consultants are using with great success with customers. The tools are open source (Apache 2.0 license) and can be easily adapted or extended to your environment.

However, we acknowledge that some tools are not as self-explanatory as they should be. We have also seen a growing need for additional migration tooling, which is why we are investing in the following tools, targeted for the Camunda 8.8 (October 2025) release:

  • Migration Analyzer: Enhancing user experience around the diagram converter and adding DMN support.
  • Data Migrator: Migrates runtime instances (running process instances) and copies audit data (history) from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8. (Limited to Camunda 8 running on RDBMS, planned for 8.9 release.)
  • Code Converter: A collection of code conversion patterns (e.g., refactoring a JavaDelegate to a JobWorker) with automation guidance (likely provided as OpenRewrite recipes).

These tools aim to simplify and streamline the migration process.

Migrating from Camunda 7 CE (Community Edition)

We regularly also get the question of whether migration from CE is also possible. And of course, it is. It is actually the exact same as for our EE edition.

If you are worried about the timeline because of the EOL of the community edition, you can switch to our Camunda 7 Enterprise Edition now and benefit from the extended support timelines right away.

Where do I get help?

With the updated migration guide, we aim to provide clearer guidance on migration tasks. We will continue improving this guide iteratively—please share your feedback via GitHub or our forum.

You can further leverage:

Next steps

As a Camunda 7 user your next steps towards migration are:

  1. Orient yourself and analyze your existing solution. This will help you understand necessary tasks and effort, so you can plan and budget your project. This can ideally be supported by a Camunda consultant or certified Camunda partner. This will also inform your timeline on migration, ideally targeting Camunda 8.8 or 8.9.
  2. Migrate your solution, adjusting your models and code.
  3. Plan data migration and roll out your migrated solution.

Let’s go!

We know that some of you felt a bit lost with migration in the last year and we are truly sorry for any confusion around the topic. Our priority has been to build the best process orchestration and automation platform in the world—but we fully recognize that supporting existing Camunda 7 users to get to this future is equally critical.

In 2025, migration support will be a top priority, led by a strategic task force headed by Mary Thengvall and myself (Bernd Ruecker). We are committed to making this transition as smooth as possible.

Looking forward to discussing migration with you! Join the conversation in our forum.

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Take a Glance Inside a Camunda 7 to Camunda 8 Self-Managed Migration https://camunda.com/blog/2024/10/inside-a-camunda-7-to-camunda-8-self-managed-migration/ Thu, 03 Oct 2024 17:10:55 +0000 https://camunda.com/?p=119213 Improve customer satisfaction while transitioning to an entirely different energy system? Not a problem with Camunda's Self-Managed migrations.

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As you examine your processes or plan your next process orchestration initiative, you may consider a partial or full migration to Camunda 8. Camunda has many customers moving from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8, each with their own set of compelling events driving this migration.

These companies have realized solid results after migrating to Camunda 8. In the case of one particular customer, they saw:

  • Streamlined processes with migration to Camunda 8
  • New feature development in place of infrastructure support
  • A solid foundation to support the energy transition

Let’s review this company’s migration journey and learn more about their experience, lessons learned, and recommendations for others embarking on this journey.

A little company background

This European multibillion-dollar energy company with over 6,000 employees distributes electricity, gas, and heat to more than five million consumers and businesses.

They’re focused on expanding their energy networks and making energy systems more accessible while improving customer communication. In addition, they want to improve customer satisfaction through convenience by improving their Customer Effort Score (CES). These goals are active while the company is transitioning to a different energy system which involves more than just switching to renewable energy and physically expanding its system.

With multiple projects on Camunda 7 and a team experienced in Camunda, this organization decided to explore migrating to Camunda 8. They initiated a lighthouse project to increase their understanding of Camunda 8 and develop a proof of concept for the migration.

Why migrate?

Eager to migrate for several reasons, the primary catalyst was that the timing was ideal. Their development team had just completed a project and was still available. Additionally, they aimed to build a long-term infrastructure as a future platform. With the resources and time at hand, they decided to pursue migration.

The migration approach

Migrating projects to Camunda 8 required careful planning and execution. This organization followed the steps that are considered best practices by Camunda:

  • Evaluation
  • Scoping
  • Planning
  • Platform setup
  • Migrate and test
  • Run

Evaluation

Initially, the team evaluated Camunda 8 to ensure it met their project requirements and provided the necessary features and functionalities. This assessment confirmed that migrating to Camunda 8 was the right decision.

Scoping

The team then scoped the project to identify which parts of the existing codebase needed to be migrated. This included all backend components, ensuring a comprehensive understanding of the work involved.

Planning

With the scope defined, the team developed a detailed migration plan. This plan outlined the steps required for the transition, including a timeline, a task list, and an assessment of potential risks and issues.

Platform setup

Switching to Camunda 8 involved deploying on Kubernetes. They successfully configured and deployed our Self-Managed version of Camunda 8 on their OpenShift environment.

Migrate and test

Before proceeding with the full migration, the team tested the process on a small subset of the project. This preliminary testing phase ensured the migration would work as expected without introducing new issues or bugs.

After confirming the success of the test migration, the team began the full migration. This involved rewriting or refactoring parts of the codebase to align with Camunda 8. Once the migration was complete, they conducted thorough testing to verify the functionality and stability of the migrated code.

Run

Finally, the team deployed their first Camunda 8 process and closely monitored the platform and processes. Continuous monitoring allowed them to promptly identify and address any issues, ensuring a smooth transition and stable operation post-migration.

Project timeline

This company secured a technical account manager (TAM) in the spring of their migration to be part of their Camunda 8 evaluation and migration project. The target for their migration completion was that fall.

It was determined that this organization could not take advantage of Camunda’s SaaS offering because of their requirements for in-house infrastructure, but they embraced the Self-Managed option. This required the company to install Camunda 8 several months before their go-live date to test properly, so this environment was installed in early summer.

Their goal was to complete the following key project milestones in four months:

  • Establishment of Camunda 8 Self-Managed environment
  • Migration of two projects
  • Comprehensive testing

Slightly before their target migration completion date, they completed the successful migration to Camunda 8, adhering to the established timeline. However, it is important to acknowledge that they had their share of challenges and temporary workarounds to achieve this migration.

Steps to improve project outcome

The company wanted the migration project to be successful and took several steps to enhance the project quality and facilitate future migrations. These steps included:

  • Clean delegates: The team concentrated on improving the readability and quality of their delegate code. They focused on tasks like reading and writing process variables, as well as handling business logic delegation. Data transformations were primarily integrated into delegates, rather than using listeners.
  • Simplified expressions: Listeners and Spring beans in expressions for Java-based data transformations were avoided. There was no reliance on an ACID transaction manager spanning multiple steps or resources. Camunda APIs, whether REST or Java, were not exposed to other services or front-end applications.
  • Streamlined data handling: The team preferred using primitive variable types or JSON payloads over XML or serialized Java objects. They utilized simple expressions or FEEL (Friendly Enough Expression Language), which was the only supported expression language in Camunda 8. Special variables like `execution` or `task` were minimized in expressions.
  • Form choices: The team chose to use their own user interface or Camunda Forms, as other form mechanisms were not provided as out-of-the-box support in Camunda 8.
  • Reduced engine plugins: The reliance on engine plugins was minimized to simplify future migration efforts.

Additionally, the team evaluated the transition to the current Camunda greenfield stack for the project’s architecture.

Deployment strategy and considerations

As noted in our post Lessons Learned when Migrating from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8, there are several approaches to migration projects. This company considered these top-level strategies:

  • Big bang: This approach involves migrating everything in a single step.
  • Inside-out: In this method, components are migrated within the current application one step at a time.
  • New world: This strategy entails incrementally migrating elements to an entirely new application.

In addition to these migration approaches, there are several steps they determined they could take to simplify and reduce the workload. Since the big bang option was considered too high risk, this company opted to go with the new world approach.

Challenges faced and solutions

There aren’t many projects that do not have challenges. The key is to identify a solution and implement it in such a way that it does not sideline the entire project.

Technical challenges

During the evaluation phase, it became evident that certain areas of the migration were going to require significant effort. They identified the following challenges:

  • How to deal with Java delegates and task listeners, which were integral components of their BPMN models
  • How to perform an essentially complete overhaul of their unit testing procedures to align with the updated Camunda version

Camunda 8 production environment issues

The DevOps team worked to install, implement, and stabilize the Camunda 8 Self-Managed platform for production but encountered issues.

Their team updated the platform as new versions were available. When they had issues, they raised JIRA tickets. Camunda’s support team worked hard to fix any issues addressing items as they were experienced. Camunda’s Customer Success Manager (CSM) and TAM worked with Product Management to allow the team to voice any concerns and provide assurance that items would continue to be addressed quickly and efficiently.

Key achievements post-migration

The company completed the migration project in early fall and successfully deployed their Camunda processes on their production Camunda 8 environment. Some of their most significant achievements were:

  • Minimizing the lead time to activate certain solutions for customers after contract signing from 62 days to only 9 days. This allowed the company to grow new solution contracts to a few hundred in 2023, over a thousand in 2024, and expect over 2500 in 2025.
  • Saving 10% of their budget and over $100,000 in employee costs with the automation of human-heavy processes specifically in the system operations, and expect more of the same in other departments.
  • Significantly reducing waiting time as well as manual labor.
  • Reducing errors with the ability to report on historical and running projects.

Including Camunda in the process of migrating

The company saw value in their migration process by including Camunda consulting. This gave them the ability to proactively mitigate risks in the project by addressing issues quickly and prioritizing properly. Camunda can provide access to multiple internal teams including support, technical account managers, consulting, customer success, and our product teams.

This does not mean that all migrations require Camunda’s assistance, but in the case of this customer, it played an important role in their success.

Conclusion

As mentioned, the organization deems this migration process a success. Some key results were as follows:

  • Streamlined processes with migration to Camunda 8 resulting in cost savings
  • Saving 3,440 hours of development time
  • New feature development in place of infrastructure support
  • A solid foundation to support the energy transition and the future

At this time, they are actively exploring additional Camunda 8 features like Connectors. They would like to remove all workarounds that were implemented as part of the migration as well.

With the success of this project, they are preparing to replicate the same process for its larger Camunda 7 process application. That project will necessitate the use of Camunda’s process instance migration feature.

Learn more about migrating

Camunda has quite a bit of information available related to migrating from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8. We encourage you to read these blog posts and review our website to gather more information so you can start your migration today:

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1&1 Discusses Their First Steps with Camunda 8 https://camunda.com/blog/2024/09/1-1-first-steps-camunda-8/ Fri, 20 Sep 2024 20:35:04 +0000 https://camunda.com/?p=118283 At CamundaCon Berlin, 2024, Georg Röver, 1&1 Telecommunications SE, discussed the advantages of their Camunda 8 adoption.

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1&1, an industry-leading telecommunications provider with over 12 million mobile customers, has experienced firsthand the benefits of implementing Camunda 8 into its workflow. Operating Europe’s first fully virtualized mobile network based on Open RAN technology, its journey with our platform is a compelling case study for businesses considering a similar shift. During his presentation at CamundaCon, Berlin, 2024, Georg Röver, 1&1 Telecommunications SE, took to our stage to discuss the necessity of a framework and an introduction to the operation and implementation of Camunda 8 at 1&1, including a look at its first process, backup strategies, and more.

An image link to the video of the presentation by Georg, showing the title slide of his presentation.
Click to view presentation

1&1 chose to transition from jBPM to Camunda 7 and then to Camunda 8, primarily due to the limitations and maintenance challenges associated with their proprietary framework based on jBPM. They sought a more robust, open-source solution that could provide executable BPMN models, improve maintainability, and avoid the complexities of their previous custom framework. Camunda 8 offered a mature, scalable, and cloud-native solution aligned with their strategic goals for process automation and operational efficiency.

Camunda 8 is a cloud-native, highly scalable process orchestration platform designed to streamline and manage complex business processes. 1&1’s transition to Camunda 8 has improved operational efficiencies and provided a substantial return on investment (ROI). Introducing a powerful tool like Camunda 8 can significantly transform an organization’s operations in business process automation and workflow management.

Clear advantages of Camunda 8

One of Camunda 8’s primary advantages, says Röver, is its cloud-native architecture, which offers outstanding scalability and resilience. This was particularly beneficial to 1&1, which has a large customer base and needs to handle processes at an ever-increasing scale. Efficiently managing processes without worrying about infrastructure is a game-changer for Röver’s team, allowing 1&1 to focus more on innovation and less on maintenance.

Another significant benefit is the ease of collaboration that Camunda 8 facilitates. With its user-friendly Modeler and clear BPMN diagrams, various teams within 1&1 can collaborate seamlessly on process design and improvement. This collective approach ensures that processes are well-understood and optimized across the board.

The ROI of Camunda 8 adoption

For 1&1, the return on investment (ROI) from Camunda 8 can be measured in several ways. One of the most notable ROI aspects being the reduction in development time and costs. The platform’s intuitive design and out-of-the-box features mean that less time is spent on creating and maintaining processes. This equates to cost savings and significantly faster time to market for new features and business-critical services.

Furthermore, the monitoring and analytics capabilities of Camunda 8 allow 1&1 to gain insights into process performance. These insights have led to data-driven decisions that further optimize operations and reduce waste, contributing to a healthier bottom line.

First process implementation

1&1’s first foray into using Camunda 8 was marked by a strategic approach, which Röver discusses in his presentation (currently available on demand). They started by understanding the architecture of Camunda 8 and assessing whether to use it as a service or on-premises. Given their robust Kubernetes infrastructure and data security considerations, they opted for an on-premise setup.

The first process they tackled was to create a backup strategy, a critical operation for any telecommunications company. The ability to perform backups without downtime and ensure data integrity remains paramount, and Camunda 8’s architecture effectively supported these requirements.

Backup strategies and beyond

The backup strategy developed with Camunda 8 considered not just the technical needs but also the business implications. A backup solution that worked across different technologies (such as Elasticsearch and OpenSearch) was implemented, ensuring flexibility and resilience.

As 1&1 continued to evolve its usage of Camunda 8, it became clear that the platform was not just about maintaining the status quo but about pushing the envelope in process automation through orchestration. Features like worker isolation and event-driven process starts were explored and integrated, showcasing the platform’s adaptability to specific business needs.

The future with Camunda 8

1&1’s experience with Camunda 8 highlights a journey of transformation and growth. The advantages and ROI realized through the use of this platform are a testament to its capabilities. From cloud-native architecture and collaborative process design to cost savings and insightful analytics, Camunda 8 has proven to be a valuable asset for 1&1.

As the business landscape evolves and customer expectations demand a path of least resistance, tools like Camunda 8 will become increasingly important in enabling organizations to adapt, provide critical services with minimal friction, and thrive.

The story of 1&1 demonstrates that Camunda 8 is not just a workflow engine but a strategic partner in process orchestration and innovation. The adaptability to company-specific requirements, such as backup strategies and worker isolation, exemplifies the platform’s flexibility. Moreover, the constant updates and improvements, driven by user feedback and feature requests, show Camunda’s commitment to its user base.

The story of implementing Camunda 8 at 1&1 also shows the importance of a well-thought-out adoption strategy. By carefully considering the architecture, deciding between cloud and on-premises, and planning for scalability from the outset, 1&1 has ensured a smooth transition to Camunda 8 that minimized disruption and maximized benefits.

Looking ahead, 1&1 believes that Camunda 8’s potential is exceptionally promising for business operations across the whole organization. As the company continues to explore the platform’s capabilities, from event-driven process initiation to advanced analytics, its journey with Camunda is just beginning. The platform’s ability to facilitate operational efficiency and strategic innovation makes it a compelling choice for any organization, not just within telecommunications, looking to stay ahead in the race to seamless digital transformation.

The advantages and ROI of using Camunda 8 at 1&1 speak volumes about the platform’s potential impact on any business. With its powerful features, scalability, and user-centric development, Camunda 8 stands out as the leader in the process orchestration space. Organizations looking to streamline their processes, improve collaboration, and drive innovation set themselves up for success and significant ROI when using Camunda 8 as a critical component of their digital strategy.

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Designing an Architecture for Smooth Migration from Camunda 7 to 8 https://camunda.com/blog/2024/09/designing-architecture-for-migration-camunda-7-to-8/ Wed, 18 Sep 2024 19:53:12 +0000 https://camunda.com/?p=118216 Toby Cook and Vicky James discuss creating a clear migration pathway for Deloitte UK to Camunda 8.

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Implementing process orchestration solutions can be daunting, especially when planning for future transitions between versions. This was the case for Toby Cook, director of digital delivery, and Vicky James, senior Camunda architect at Deloitte UK. They discussed their journey from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8 and how they created a clear migration pathway to Camunda 8 on behalf of one of their clients.

At CamudaCon Berlin, 2024, they explored the strategy they employed, with insights gained throughout the process.

Screenshot of a presentation for CamundaCon 2024 Berlin with Deloitte
Click to view presentation

The client’s challenge

Their client, the Defense Geographic Center (DGC/NCAP), required an updated system for managing geographic artifacts. DGC/NCAP holds more than 26 million aerial photographs from around the globe, many declassified and released by the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence and taken during the Second World War and the Cold War.

Their existing processes were manual and repetitive, which could lead to poor data quality and user fatigue. The goal was to modernize operations, streamline processes, and ensure data accuracy.

Creating a path for migration

Cook and James’s approach to solving this challenge was multifaceted. In their presentation, they discuss how they began by externalizing a custom task list application and adopting the external task pattern in Camunda 7, which set the groundwork for a seamless migration from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8.

They also embraced a microservices architecture, informed by domain driven design (DDD), ensuring modular and flexible systems that could grow with their client’s needs.

“We’ve delivered more than 25 feature sets in 12 months. Modular architecture in the workflow and the bespoke UI design system have significantly reduced the delivery time of further products, greatly increasing return on investment.”

Vicky James, Senior Camunda Architect, Deloitte UK

Technical innovations and custom solutions

One critical aspect of the solution was creating a custom task list application. This approach allowed them to deliver a user-friendly experience tailored to the client’s requirements. Cook and James also discuss how they developed a custom forms engine to enhance the user interface, addressing one of the key pain points: data entry and management.

Valuable lessons learned

Throughout the project, Cook, James, and their team learned several valuable lessons:

  • Engage users early and often to build trust and ensure the solution fits their needs.
  • Prepare for compatibility challenges, such as those they faced with Keycloak integration.
  • Consider security implications when using managed services such as Amazon OpenSearch.
  • Use embedded reusable processes for operational efficiency and maintainability.
  • Accelerate delivery by leveraging reusable components and patterns.

Outcomes and business value

The results of Cook and James’s project for DGC/NCAP were significant. They achieved:

  • Improved data quality and user experience.
  • Operational efficiencies through automated stock management.
  • Optimized reporting, allowing the business to make informed decisions.
  • High resiliency and security of mission-critical systems.
  • Reduced time to value, with the ability to demonstrate proof of concept in just a few weeks.

“We’ve been surprised by the user engagement we’ve seen throughout the process, and we’ve been able to vastly improve legacy processes, increase efficiency, and deliver measurable change for our clients.”

Toby Cook, Director of Digital Delivery, Deloitte UK

In their presentation, Cook and James discuss how their journey with the DGC/NCAP has been enlightening and rewarding. The positive feedback from users and the operational improvements achieved are testaments to the benefits of a well-thought-out approach to workflow solution implementation.

As they embark on new projects directly on Camunda 8, they are confident in their ability to build upon the successes and learnings, delivering even more value to their clients.

Considering future projects

As they transition to new projects on Camunda 8, Cook and James discussed how they are excited to build reusable services to aid others in their Camunda 7 to Camunda 8 migrations. Their experience has shown that with careful planning, a user-centric focus, and a commitment to agile methodologies, breaking projects down into several dynamic sprints, it is possible to create an architecture that not only meets current needs but also paves the way for future growth and essential technological advancement.

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Getting Change on Track: Deutsche Bahn’s Camunda Transformation https://camunda.com/blog/2024/08/deutsche-bahn-camunda-8/ Fri, 30 Aug 2024 19:05:08 +0000 https://camunda.com/?p=117226 Alexander Petioky, IT partner at Deutsche Bahn, describes how they transitioned their Java application from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8.

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As Germany’s state-owned national railway company, Deutsche Bahn operates a complex network of services and infrastructure across Germany and beyond; a system of more than 33,000 kilometers (around 20,500 miles) of track. In his on-demand presentation at CamundaCon Berlin, 2024, Alexander Petioky discussed how Camunda has been central to DB’s efforts to modernize and streamline its application processes, enhancing efficiency and adaptability across its many IT systems and critical infrastructure, specifically focusing on adopting and integrating Camunda 7 and Camunda 8.

Deutsche Bahn (DB) is an extensive conglomerate comprising several large business units, each handling different aspects of railway operations. From passenger transport to cargo freight, infrastructure management, and power supply through DB Energy, the organization encompasses a variety of specialized companies. The IT architecture within DB is equally diverse, with numerous applications developed in Java, all pivotal to the safe and timely daily operations of their railway network.

Application development evolution with Camunda

In its decade-long history with Java application development, DB has witnessed a significant evolution in its processes, particularly with the introduction of Camunda. Initially, DB operated applications handling anywhere from 100,000 to over 20 million process instances annually. The shift from their previous Camunda 7 applications to the new Camunda 8 marked a significant progression, moving from established migrations to the development of entirely new, greenfield applications using Camunda, which Alexander discussed at length in his presentation (available now, on-demand).

Smoothing transition with Camunda

Transitioning to Camunda 8 posed several minor challenges, notably in terms of architecture and system coupling, but none were unsurmountable, and Alexander discusses these at length.

One task lay in the decoupling of applications from the process engine, a defining feature of the Camunda 8 architecture, which promises more flexibility and scalability. DB’s strategy involved an intermediary step—retaining the use of Camunda 7 while preparing for a full transition to Camunda 8. This involved employing external tasks and setting up a standalone Camunda engine, easing the switch between the old and new systems.

Migration strategies and production deployment with Camunda

The migration to a production environment with Camunda is a decisive phase involving strategic choices about the migration process. DB’s approach included both “big bang” and incremental migration strategies. The “big bang” approach, while straightforward, carried the risk of downtime and potential issues that might arise during the transition. Conversely, the incremental approach allowed for a more controlled transition. A critical aspect of this phase was the management of dynamic data such as running process instances and variables, which DB managed through careful coordination and planning.

Final reflections on the Camunda journey

DB’s journey with Camunda underscores the importance of a comprehensive strategy when adopting new technology. The process involves more than just technical upgrades—it requires a holistic view that considers the organizational structure, application architecture, and overall operational strategy. Camunda has provided DB with the tools necessary to create more modular, scalable, and efficient applications, which are essential for the railway’s operation and solving the problems of tomorrow in any industry sector.

DB’s experience with Camunda serves as an instructive lesson for other organizations undergoing similar technological transitions. It highlights the significance of innovative solutions like Camunda in navigating the complexities of IT systems and emphasizes the continuous need for adaptability and innovation in a rapidly evolving tech landscape. With the support of Camunda, DB is on track to face future challenges and continue its journey toward operational excellence in railway services.

Click to view presentation

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Scaling Workflow Engines at Intuit with Camunda 8 and Zeebe https://camunda.com/blog/2024/08/scaling-workflow-engines-intuit-camunda-8-zeebe/ Wed, 14 Aug 2024 20:16:51 +0000 https://camunda.com/?p=116113 The team at Intuit put Camunda 8 to the test. Even when simulating the load of a tax-season peak, Camunda 8 effectively scaled to meet the needed demand.

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While every organization seeks to find ways to increase their business process efficiency and reduce latency, it is critically important for Intuit, who serves 100 million customers worldwide with TurboTax, Credit Karma, QuickBooks, and Mailchimp in its mission to power prosperity throughout the world. In order to fulfill that mission, Intuit’s development team is constantly on the lookout for the cutting-edge technologies and techniques that can help them drive digital transformation.

That’s why Intuit, which has partnered with Camunda to power our process orchestration practice for five years, wanted to put Camunda 8 and its promise of endless scalability to the test and determine if Camunda 8 could help us scale our process workflow instances without sacrificing speed, particularly through extremely high-volume periods. Here’s how we designed our experiment—and what we discovered throughout the process.

Context

We have been using Camunda 7 for the last five years at Intuit, deploying it across multiple swimlanes with multi-tenancy and offering isolation.

Currently we automate workflows for a variety of use cases at Intuit, including automated complex approvals, sending reminders, and notifications for our mid-market customers from QuickBooks (QBO). At the same time, Camunda empowers our tax experts by automating tax filings for TurboTax customers. We have more than 70 offerings that use automated workflows powered by Camunda.

How are we using Camunda

Currently, we are addressing these use cases with Camunda:

  1. High-volume simple reminders; these reminders are generated at a volume of approximately one million reminders over only a few hours each day, operating at a process creation transactions per second (TPS) of 50 and external task TPS of 150.
  2. Complex tax filing workflows that operate at a high throughput speed during peak tax season.
  3. Approval workflows that are smaller in scale, but also need to have a low latency.

For each of these workflow categories, we have a list of external tasks that connect with our workflow service to create tasks, send emails, and a number of custom adapters.

Current Camunda 7 scale and benchmarks

Camunda 7 scaling

As the team’s interest in implementing process orchestration at scale grew, we began to run into some challenges handling our target volume in Camunda 7. These challenges included:

Current bottlenecks with Camunda 7

  1. External task scaling; our team at Intuit identified that external tasks did not scale beyond 150-160 TPS on average /topic.
  2. Number of jobs; the number of jobs did not scale beyond 1000-1200 TPS.
  3. External task TP99 (TP99) latency; the TP99 was up to four seconds in some instances.
  4. Relational database systems (RDS) spikes during sudden traffic surges because of an increase in job surges.
  5. RDS spikes when there was a surge in timer job execution.

Camunda 7 scale achievements

At first, the team sought to solve these challenges within Camunda 7 through thoughtful BPMN diagramming and testing. While we saw some advancements, we made some observations that led us to conclude that Camunda 7 was not the right fit for us near-real time use cases.

BPMN used

Bpmn-diagram-attempt

Intuit was able to scale up to 10 TPS with a single topic.

Simulation NameDuration (Hours)Max TPSAvg TPSProcess Created- ClosedExternal Task Lag (Seconds)
10 TPS for 8 hours, single  topic8 2701332885991.9
12 TPS for 8 hours, single topic1340210420000>4
20 TPS for 8 hours, two topics84702605771251.6

We subsequently scaled topics and hence workers and were able to scale external task fetch and lock to 700 TPS (on average) consistently.

During this testing, we observed the following:

  1. As we increased the number of topics, the CPU input/output operations per second (IOPS) load on relational database systems(RDS) was very high. As a result, we have to increase the RDS database (DB) vertically.
  2. It was difficult to control external task latency within one (1) second. It was deemed not suitable for near-real time use cases.

With that decision made, the team turned to Camunda 8 and its workflow and decision engine, Zeebe.

Camunda 8 and Zeebe

As we evaluated using Camunda 8 and Zeebe for our workflows, we implemented the following guidelines while completing our scale benchmarking:

  1. TP99 of external task execution should be less than 500 milliseconds (ms).
  2. Each process would have at least 10-15 variables each.
  3. No spikes in Elasticsearch or any pod memory.
  4. Each test run will last at least 45 minutes to 1 hour to avoid any anomaly. Once our test runs are optimal, we will certify by running for at least 12 hours.
  5. Currently, we only have one active region and Disaster Recovery is not implemented.

Testing the waters

We started with a small performance test with a single external task. This was implemented with a simple BPMN model, with a start process, one external task, and an end process.

Test-camunda8-process

Initial configuration

With our performance test designed, we started our testing configuration with 500 process creations using a minimal amount of resources. From this test, we saw the following results:  

Zeebe G/W PodsZeebe BrokersPartitionsCPU/brokerMemory (GB)/brokerAvg External Task TPSP99(Seconds)Avg(seconds)
2334420050 20
2338872017 8
2398821004 1.6

Quick Observations:

  1. Increasing CPU and memory per pod per broker helps to scale.
  2. Increasing the number of partitions and brokers helps to scale external tasks and reduce the TP99 latency.

Gaining confidence

Since we saw an improvement related to external task TPS, we wanted to check our TP99 overhead latency to confirm it would be less than 500 ms.

We used a strategy to reduce the load to 200 TPS and decrease the latency.

We also increased the number of external tasks to four.

Additional high-level changes

We made the following high-level changes to our test:

  1. Enabled streaming in the Zeebe client.
  2. Increased the number of brokers and partitions.
  3. Ensure partitions are kept in odd numbers to obtain better quorums.

In our next round of testing, we saw the following results:

BrokersPartitionsTotal Processes CreatedProcess Creation TPS (Max)Process Creation TPS (Avg)External Task MAX TPSExternal TaskTPS (AVG)External Task Round Trip P99 (in ms)External Task p95 (in ms)External Task avg (in ms)Prf Test Durations
7152.4M34119729017903201201103 hours

Observations:

  1. We experienced awesome TP99 and average latency.
  2. 2.5M processes were created and the latency was acceptable.
  3. It was best to ensure each Zeebe gateway can handle up to 200-250 TPS. We used the following rule: number of Zeebe gateways = number of Zeebe brokers/2.

Pushing the test a bit further

BrokersPartitionsTPSTotal Processes CreatedProcess Creation TPS (Max)Process Creation TPS (Avg)External Task MAX TPSExternal TaskTPS (AVG)External Task Round Trip P99 (in ms)External Task p95 (in ms)External Task avg (in ms)Prf Test Durations
715300900K45627527061096250018209101h
9173001M532276306711079008503501h
927300800K4003003052105711200.90.445m
1127300984K4742755110109823001.751.41h
1325300910K4702654120105633502.41.571h
1333300737K44929929711192196011300.9345m
99300300K6862873071130070032010015 min
994001.3M690381320515257003801201 h

Observations

  1. One partition per broker is optimal to get the best results.
  2. External task TPS increased.
  3. TP99 of external tasks was always above a second whenever the partition-to-broker size was greater than one in case of higher load. To benchmark at a higher scale, it’s recommended to have 1-1 mapping between partitions and brokers.
  4. Increasing partitions per broker did not decrease the latency.

Trying to be greedy

Feeling encouraged by our successful testing, we decided to further push the limits and “get greedy” to see how far we could increase our TPS and maintain acceptable latency.

Using the above configuration (four external tasks and the same broker size), increased the TPS to 450.

TP99 increased to more than a minute (70 seconds).

To further debug whether this issue can be resolved, we set up observability by using Grafana (provided by the Camunda community).

From the Grafana dashboards, we were able to check, the IOPS were too high for the EC2 instances. Reviewing this information, we increased the IOPS and throughput for the EC2 instances.

Final outcome

Our final testing results were:

BrokersPartitionsTPS# Number of external tasksTotal Processes CreatedProcess Creation TPS (Max)Process Creation TPS (Avg)External Task MAX TPSExternal TaskTPS (AVG)External Task Round Trip P99 (in ms)External Task p95 (in ms)External Task avg (in ms)Prf Test DurationsRemarks
994504640k8924233684170071528124030 minsIncreased the EC2 iops throughput from 125 to 600
995004640k7144763608188442028121530 minsgood
111150051.3M884445417722099005903101hgood
131350052.5M11304835360241112302hFirst hour TP99 was good, but it started degrading towards the end
131350051.6M890460420022225702501501hGood for 1 hour -> Increased the EC2 throughput from 600-1000and IOPS from 1000 to 3000
131350054.3M1130471525023559005003002:30 hLast hour -TP99 was around 2 seconds. Degradation of TP99 started after first 75-90 minutes
151550055.1M782469400023714203603003:00 hIncreased EC2 IOPS to 6000
151550065 M741446534325437005603503 hIncreased throughput to 1000 and IOPS to 9000

Observations:

  1. We reduced TP99 to approximately 500 ms (we make a downstream call, which takes up to 100-200) ms.
  2. We concluded that it may be possible to scale infinitely using Camunda 8 by fine-tuning the parameters described above.
  3. We experienced some initial delays of TP99 in initial loads. Eventually, the performance improved significantly.
  4. Increasing from GP2 to GP3 volumes further decreased the latency.

Comparison after increasing IOPS and throughput

Before
Performance-comparison-before
After:

Avg of all requests were in milliseconds.

Note: Ignore the Activate Jobs Latency metric, since the streaming was not enabled in a few pods.

Performance-comparison-after

Tsunami test: Keeping our QuickBooks and TurboTax offerings tax-season ready

The American tax season, which concludes with an annual April 15 deadline, generates periods of extremely high process instance volumes that we need to be sure we can accommodate. During these tax-season peaks, we see extreme use cases where we often have a continuous TPS of 400-500 TPS for three to four days. It was important for us to conduct a “tsunami test” for at least 15 hours to replicate those instances and ensure our process instances could handle the demands of tax season.

As a reminder, here is the BPMN used for this process:

Bpmn-diagram-attempt

Attributes:

The BPMN has been adapted, but at a high level, includes the following attributes:

  • 7 external tasks
  • All tasks are asynchronous
  • Approx 75 variables (few were maps)

Results:

  • Total processes created ~ 22.74M
  • Total process Creation Average TPS: 395 (Maximum: 498)
  • External task fetch and lock TPS: Maximum: 7007, Average: 2815
  • Overall TP99 latency of external tasks: 450ms (Downstream latency of ~150ms)
  • Total Number of external tasks executed: 114M

Observations

  • We experienced latency of external tasks increasing after four to five hours. On further inspection of server-side streaming, we found that it was not enabled for a few pods. There was a bug in the Community version of spring-zeebe. However, when we moved from Spring Zeebe to normal streaming, it improved our TP99 from 1 seconds to 450 ms.
  • It is important to fine tune Zeebe client parameters such as maxTasks, timeout, and thread pools based on your variable size.
  • We also tested with timers (which we have not shown in this BPMN model due to internal sharing policy), and we were pleased with the performance, as it ran without any spikes at the above TPS.

Camunda 7 vs Camunda 8 comparison

Performance metrics

MetricsCamunda 7Camunda 8
TPS of Workflow Process Creation20375
Total Number of workflows created in 10 hours577K (0.5M)15M
External Task Worker TPS per workflow (1 Camunda topic/workflow)Max: ~200 Avg: 150 Max: 9100 Avg: 3200
External Task Worker across all workflowsMax: 900, Avg: 560 Max: 9100, Avg: 3600
TPS for  Asynchronous jobs (for eg: Timer, async continuations for tasks)Max:600 Avg: 280Max: 7000, Avg: 2100
TP99 of Round Trip of External Task workers~3.6 seconds ~250 ms
Database ScalingCurrently can be scaled vertically (current infra m5.8x-large)Horizontal scaling (By adding more brokers(pods))

Current improvements we are working on with the Camunda team

During our migration and testing process, we encountered some challenges, which we are working with the Camunda team to fix.

  • When the variable size increases by more than 100-150KB, we experience slowdowns when exporting the data to ElasticSearch. This slowdown occurs because the size of the processing queue increases and affects the overall process speed.
  • Operate lags behind under high TPS and can show slightly stale data.
  • We saw a few (100 out of 25 Million) duplicated events when processes were created twice, although we are still determining if the duplicated events is occurring due to Camunda or our testing software setup.

Conclusion

Overall, Camunda 8 scales well with a TP99 latency of less than 250ms. It definitely outperforms Camunda 7 in terms of scaling. Our team is excited about the possibilities that Camunda 8 offers us to help scale our workflows and deliver on Intuit’s mission to power prosperity by supporting users navigating tax regulations and preparing their filings in our QuickBooks and TurboTax systems.

The post Scaling Workflow Engines at Intuit with Camunda 8 and Zeebe appeared first on Camunda.

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Examining a Successful Camunda 7 to Camunda 8 Migration https://camunda.com/blog/2024/05/successful-camunda-7-camunda-8-migration/ Fri, 10 May 2024 19:25:41 +0000 https://camunda.com/?p=106920 Learn from the experience of one organization that recently migrated from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8, including why they did it and how they prepared.

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As you examine your own processes or begin planning your next process orchestration initiative, you may find yourself considering a partial or full migration to Camunda 8. Camunda has many customers who are moving from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8, each with their own set of reasons or compelling events driving this migration.

Let’s review one such customer and learn more about their experience, lessons learned, and recommendations for others embarking on this journey.

The need for modernization and digital transformation

A disruptive startup in Germany provides motor insurance to its clients. Acting originally as a spinoff from a larger company, its purpose was to simplify insurance by providing a digital and intelligent process to minimize the paperwork and confusion often associated with insurance. Founded in 2018, the company has approximately 60 employees and in 2023, about 100,000 customers.

Camunda adoption journey

This insurance company had little to no automation around claims or contract processing, and it was determined that both business units could benefit from process orchestration and automation to drive superior customer experiences.

By providing quicker turnaround for claims processing, the insurance provider could optimize their customer service while processing higher volumes promptly and efficiently. This realization motivated them to select Camunda for the implementation of this vision.

They originally started by implementing a process around contract termination and document management that handles email communications and attachments with Camunda. After the completion of this project, they decided to address the claims management process for automobile claims with Camunda as well.

The push to move to Camunda 8

As a disruptive startup, the company wanted to focus its engineering efforts on pure innovation instead of supporting and maintaining infrastructure. The cloud-native Camunda 8 solution provides a scalable and event-driven architecture combined with SaaS, eliminating the overhead of IT infrastructure management.

This company implemented Camunda 7 in mid-2022 using Docker containers in AWS Cloud, so they were no novice when it came to the cloud. Moreover, the company was aware that Camunda was actively developing new features for Camunda 8 and it was the future of Camunda when they purchased Camunda 7, so they were excited about completing the migration and aligning with Camunda’s vision for the future.

Since the company was already taking advantage of external task clients with Camunda 7 as well as Elasticsearch, SaaS was a strong reason to consider Camunda 8, as they liked the idea of not hosting the software themselves.

Most importantly, making this migration would send a strong message to their parent company about further innovation and process improvements while positioning them with the right technology for the future.  

Approach to migration

One of the most challenging parts of migrating any system is where to start. Camunda adheres to a specific methodology when doing migrations. It is important to find the right project to be successful and move forward with your migration.

Migration preparation

This company reviewed all existing processes as a team. The selected process was not overly complex but included similarities with their other processes. This meant they selected a process with existing service tasks and gateways, as these constructs were likely to be found in other processes as well. In addition, they elected to implement a brand new process in Camunda 8 so they could gain knowledge and become more familiar with Camunda 8 as a platform.

Before embarking on the migration, the entire team took BPMN training with Camunda Consulting. They also had some standard training content available to them in Camunda Academy that was customized around their existing claims process. Using the Camunda 8 SaaS deployment has eliminated the need for some of these original skills.

Migration decisions

They made a conscious choice to avoid any in-flight processes to minimize the complexity of the migration effort. They did have one long-running process that they addressed procedurally and by allowing these processes to wait so no inflight process migration was required.

In addition, both versions were run simultaneously. Processes were migrated in their entirety including any subprocesses. Running both Camunda 7 and Camunda 8 allowed processes that originally started in Camunda 7 during the migration to finish using that version; however, all newly migrated processes start in Camunda 8. For a while, one process actually used both versions at the same time, but it worked well and was eventually migrated completely over to Camunda 8.

The process data and process history were not migrated, since the required data for the processes were stored in back-office applications so they remained the one source of truth. Not having to migrate this information simplified the migration process as well.

Time and effort

This particular customer had just under twenty (20) processes to migrate and started their migration in mid-2023. They targeted completion of all processes by November 2023, and they completed the migration with a relatively small team of approximately 25 individuals.

The actual migration was quite straightforward. They had to change some dependencies, update external tasks, execute search and replace in the code for certain changes, and migrate tests. The migration of their tests took the most time. The code base for their solutions under Camunda 7 had under 10,000 lines of code, which was manageable for the size of their team.

They did take advantage of the BPMN diagram converter to migrate the diagrams from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8. However, they did not use any other of the migration tools provided as they felt they had the expertise in-house to perform the migration.  

Improvements made during the migration

With any migration effort, it is always important to take the time to see if improvements can be made to processes being migrated.

In this client’s case, they were already working with external task clients as well as a few Java delegates in their process models. With their migration, they reduced the number of Java delegates and employed several listeners. They also removed some service tasks that had previously shown some inefficiencies in the way they were implemented in Camunda 7.

Challenges encountered

They did find that it was a bit more challenging to run Camunda 8 locally. They started out using Docker compose files for their local installation but then settled in with kind as an alternative. They found it was easier to deploy locally with kind than with compose files. 

The new normal with Camunda 8

Both claims and contract termination are processed with Camunda 8 at this time.

This company has noticed process improvements related to the time it takes certain processes to run. They are also very pleased with Operate and the insight it provides into error handling and correction.

They are currently using Optimize to gather information to determine where automation is helping and where they could improve and streamline additional processes. Their immediate approach is to review the speed of completion for certain processes and then automate certain areas of the process with service workers to improve performance.

Savings after the migration

This startup has had more time to improve processes and create efficiencies since the migration to Camunda 8. When running Camunda 7, they utilized Postgres and installed Camunda in AWS. With Camunda 8, they have eliminated the need for time-consuming database upgrades and this is a big savings.

More than the costs, however, is the ability to deploy these individuals previously required for infrastructure support of their Camunda 7 implementation to develop new features and improve existing processes. This has not only made the employees with DevOps experience happier but has allowed them to look at other processes that can be addressed with automation.

These savings in overhead were significant. Before the migration, at least two (2) days a month were spent managing their Camunda 7 infrastructure. This has been eliminated with the migration to Camunda 8, providing a total savings of five (5) FTE work weeks each year.

What’s next?

This company is looking forward to reviewing and using Connectors in the future. They have immediate needs around email notifications and initiating a process with an email. In addition, they currently have a process that moves documents to Amazon Simple Storage Service (S3). They would like to investigate the use of Connectors to access these documents from S3. Finally, they would like to add new processes or opportunities around the back office related to contracts.

Recommendations for migrating

When we asked if they had any advice for other companies making this translation, they had a few.

  • Try to take advantage of the automatic migration tool.
  • Start new processes in Camunda 8 and migrate processes already started to Camunda 7 over time.
  • Be sure that your client version matches your Zeebe cluster version.
  • Read the documentation and gain as much upfront knowledge as possible.
  • Write tests to confirm the success of your migration. Make sure they are good tests.
  • If you use the external task client, it will help in the migration. This way there is no need to migrate from Java delegates.

Suggestions for others looking at process orchestration

They noted that one of the biggest benefits of process orchestration is that processes are always documented. With the emphasis on process governance, it’s critical to maintain thorough process documentation.

Take advantage of standards-based tools, like BPMN, and review the documentation to learn more about it.

Learn more about migrating

Camunda has quite a bit of information related to migrating from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8. We encourage you to read these blogs and review our website to gather more information so you can start your migration today.

The post Examining a Successful Camunda 7 to Camunda 8 Migration appeared first on Camunda.

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Camunda Migration Methodology https://camunda.com/blog/2024/03/camunda-migration-methodology/ Tue, 26 Mar 2024 19:53:33 +0000 https://camunda.com/?p=103558 Learn about our approach to migration from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8, and how we can help you achieve it as quickly and effectively as possible.

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Welcome back to another blog about migrating from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8. In this edition, we explain our migration methodology and how this is applied to a migration project. Without a proven methodology, migrations can prove to be unsuccessful or encounter issues along the way. Camunda has tested our methodology working with many customers as they migrate to Camunda 8.

If you need to catch up, please read our previous blogs in our Migration Series:

How can Camunda Consulting help you with migration?

Camunda Consulting can support you throughout your migration process. We start by providing an overview of Camunda 8, including the product components and the advantages of this platform. We also provide information on the architecture of Camunda 8 and details about the implementation options—SaaS and Self-Managed—to help you determine what is best for your organization.

Because Camunda 8 offers new features and functions, our consulting services can provide an overview of these additional features and make recommendations about what features are best suited for your processes.

If you do not feel comfortable embarking on your migration journey alone, Camunda consulting services can assist you in various ways, including process diagram and code review as well as in the solution conversion process. Once you have some processes converted, including job workers and other programmed components, Camunda helps by running tests and planning a rollout.

What is Camunda’s migration methodology?

Camunda has developed a methodology for migrating to Camunda 8. Although this blog focuses on the migration from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8, this methodology is valid when migrating from another vendor product to Camunda 8 as well. Of course, with Camunda 7, our consultants are particularly familiar with the nuances and the benefits of new tooling to provide advantages and recommendations.

There are six (6) major steps in Camunda’s migration methodology process. These do not necessarily have to happen in this order. For example, you may want to start doing some training on Camunda 8 to assist in the planning phase or perform your platform setup earlier.

  • Evaluate
  • Scope
  • Plan
  • Platform Setup
  • Migrate
  • Run

These stages are explained in the following graphic:

Camunda-migration-methodology

Let’s look at the methodology components in a bit more detail.

Evaluate

During the evaluation phase, Camunda and your organization discuss the various advantages of moving from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8 and which components are required to provide similar functionality.

Camunda recommends a small POC or a Hackathon to get hands-on experience with Camunda 8 to expedite the learning and comprehension process.

The discussion and possible small POC are both important to the evaluation phase, and Camunda will help you determine which pieces would be helpful to your organization at this stage.

Scope

Scoping the migration project is very important and will help you plan what needs to be migrated and how to dissect those components for migration.

Reviewing what should be migrated can also indicate what immediate Camunda 8 skills are necessary and what skills should be acquired in addition to those, possibly at a later stage.

During the scoping phase, Camunda’s migration tooling can help you analyze your diagrams to best understand the impact of migration on your organization. Analyzing your current implementation helps to determine the required migration steps, to allow you to identify the version you can migrate to, and to find out if there are still feature gaps in Camunda 8 that need to be raised with with Camunda product management.

Plan

Once you have evaluated the migration for your Camunda 7 implementation and scoped the effort involved, it is time to plan. Planning is crucial and can make or break the success of your migration.

One of the things you will want to consider is if there are new projects that may be targeted for the short term. These may be excellent candidates to get your feet wet with Camunda 8. You can start by implementing a new process, or one that may integrate with existing Camunda 7 subprocesses, which will allow your team to get familiar with Camunda 8 without mapping existing Camunda 7 functionality and diagrams to the new version.

Another key part of planning is determining your timeline. Your timeline needs to consider the time it takes to complete diagram migrations as well as any associated coding, user interfaces, or other artifacts that might require changes. You also need to consider if and for how long you will want to run both versions in parallel and when you want to retire Camunda 7.

Camunda recommends starting with a lighthouse project as your initial process for Camunda 8.

What is a lighthouse project? 
A lighthouse project is a project that is small in scale but has a big-picture focus. This type of project usually focuses on a short-term, well-defined, and measurable project that can serve as a model for future projects.

Platform Setup

What would be the best platform for your Camunda 8 environment? Some of this may depend on your own company’s policies and existing technologies as well as how you manage and run your processes with Camunda 7.

You will want to work with the Camunda consultants to determine if you might want to run SaaS or Self-Managed and why. You will also want to look into sizing your platform so that it properly fits your needs.

If the decision is to move forward with a Self-Managed configuration, Camunda Consulting will provide guidance and recommendations on how best to deploy Camunda 8 in your environment.

Migrate

Migration is not a trivial project and takes careful evaluation and planning. When you get to this step, the Camunda migration methodology has prepared you well for this step.

First, you want to review if anything can be automated as part of the migration. Are there tools that can be used to map to new features or for existing diagrams?

When you migrate, it might be a good time to review your processes and determine if there is something that can be improved or refactored. This may just be a section or area that has been on the list for reevaluation or it might be something that can take advantage of new features or functionality provided with Camunda 8. However, you will want to weigh any modifications carefully to make sure that this is the time to embark on those changes.

There are several migration tools, for example the Data Migrator, to help migrate running instances from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8. This allows you to migrate one solution in a big bang approach, but of course you can also slowly phase out Camunda 7 and run both solutions in parallel for some time after the migration is complete.

Run

Once you are migrated, you will have to run your new Camunda 8 environment and will need guidance around best practices and recommendations for observing and monitoring your processes.

This is where you will work with Operate to monitor existing processes and Optimize to analyze your processes. But you are not limited to these Camunda components, you can also use tools like Prometheus and Grafana for infrastructure observability as well.

Accelerating your migration efforts

We offer a variety of tools to help you accelerate your migration efforts. You can start by signing up for a free SaaS trial. These free trial clusters have the same functionality as a production cluster, but are small in size and are no longer available after the trial period.  

There are also several migration tools available to assist in your migration efforts. This includes:

  • Migration Analyzer: Helps you gain a first understanding of migration tasks. Available for local installation (requires Java) or hosted as a free SaaS offering.
  • Data Migrator: Copies active Camunda 7 runtime instances and existing audit trail data (history) to Camunda 8.
  • Code Converter: Supported by a mixture of diagram conversion tools, code conversion patterns, and automatable refactoring recipes.
  • Camunda 7 Adapter: Run existing Camunda 7 delegation code directly in a Camunda 8 environment.

Do you still want more? We can work on a time to schedule a discussion with our product management.

Get educated

We encourage you to learn about Camunda 8 before any migration efforts and recommend starting with Camunda Academy. Our academy provides on-demand courses 24×7, 365 days a year (English only). You also have the option to take public or private classroom training (English and Deutsch). We have a course that provides an overview of a Camunda 8 migration.  

Stay tuned for more migration information

We will be providing additional information about the migration process and tools we have to assist you and your organization make this transition.

In the meantime, check out these migration resources:

If you are interested in migrating and want assistance from Camunda, reach out to your Customer Success Manager or customer-success@camunda.com.  And remember that you can always explore Camunda 8 with a free trial today.

Editor’s note: This post was originally published in March 2024, but has been updated as of March 2025 for clarity and accuracy.

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Lessons Learned when Migrating from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8 https://camunda.com/blog/2024/03/lessons-learned-migrating-camunda-7-camunda-8/ Mon, 18 Mar 2024 17:39:21 +0000 https://camunda.com/?p=103006 We've learned a lot about how to do migration well from our experience with customers. Read on to learn our top lessons to help make your migration easier.

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Migrating from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8 can seem intricate, so it is important to plan and execute your plan appropriately. Camunda has compiled some lessons learned based on numerous migrations completed with our customers. We wanted to share these with you so that you can learn from lessons others gained in their migration projects, avoid pitfalls and make better decisions when you take the step to migrate.

There are many low-level lessons learned related to code changes of certain components of your process, but this blog addresses higher-level lessons so they can be avoided.

Things to watch out for when migrating

Big bang migration—or drain out?

You can do a parallel run of Camunda 7 and Camunda 8 while the migration is ongoing and for some time after the migration is complete. This approach, called drain out, does not require copying any data from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8.

Camunda-7-camunda-8-migration-timeline

Parallel running provides other benefits as well. You can compare the results of the new version to the old version as well as review any errors. Having access to the old version of Camunda can help in error resolution as well.

However, this might also add complexity, as you now have two orchestration engines running in parallel. If you want to avoid this, you can also migrate one solution in one big bang, where you shutdown your old Camunda 7 solution and use the Data Migrator tool to copy relevant data to Camunda 8. The big bang also doesn’t have to be super big, as you can still migrate process by process. You can check the migration guide for details on this decision.

The best way to migrate is this running parallel versions approach so that you can take advantage of the new version while still slowly decommissioning Camunda 7.

Gaps in understanding of the product differences

You will be moving to Camunda 8 and this means some things have changed. For example, instead of Cockpit, you will use Operate. There are some conceptual differences between the platforms that should be reviewed and understood before taking the jump to Camunda 8.

Without making note of these differences, you cannot clearly understand what challenges to expect when migrating. The engine is different, Camunda 8 embraces new technologies and features—this provides a solid and flexible framework for your process orchestration, but you need to make sure that you understand how these differences will affect your migration and the timeline.

Your team needs to invest in training to learn the new version and to understand these product differences. If you do not properly prepare the migration staff with the required skills and knowledge, this can cause potential problems and inefficiencies in the transition.

Inadequate training can also lead to delays in the delivery date which can affect other projects. You should always make sure that training costs are factored into the migration plan to ensure a smooth and cost-effective transition.

Be sure to review this video by our co-founder Bernd Ruecker to better understand the differences between the products.

Poor acceptance

Your staff may resist the migration if they are not adequately introduced and prepared for application changes or modifications with the new version. This resistance can be exposed in various ways, including negative attitudes, decreased morale, and reluctance to embrace the new version. If users do not accept and adopt the new version, it can negate the benefits of the migration resulting in a less successful implementation.

Diminished efficiency and poor use of features

Camunda 8 comes with enhanced features and new capabilities. Failing to understand these features means missing out on potential benefits and improvements in functionality that could positively impact the organization. This includes missed opportunities to optimize migrated processes.

For example, with Camunda 8, messages can be buffered for a given time. This is very useful when there is no guarantee that the subscription will be opened before the message is published.

Another example is the use of Camunda Optimize. This component can be used to provide significant insight into your processes which can improve the efficiency of the process. For example, analyzing the branches and activities can help determine if certain steps or areas are required or if improvements can be made in the process.

Camunda-optimize-report

Without studying Camunda 8 capabilities, the users of the migrated solutions might struggle with the functionality and the migration staff may not know the best ways to “map” current Camunda 7 processes, services, and functionality to the optimal component in Camunda 8. This can lead to downtime, errors, and decreased productivity.

Missed refactoring opportunities

There are many new features provided with Camunda 8 that can simplify and streamline your workflows. This can include the use of out-of-the-box Connectors and message buffering, for example. Camunda 8’s polyglot architecture allows you to write services in a variety of languages.

Please read our blog on Why Migrate from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8 to read about other opportunities to refactor your Camunda 7 solutions using Camunda 8 offerings.

Incomplete or incorrect migration project plan

It is very important that your organization diligently plan for the migration. All tasks need to be included to make sure nothing is missed. For example, the availability of other systems, proper credentials, the configuration of clusters, and properly allotting time for coding changes and process diagrams is key to having a complete project plan.

If there are missing steps or information in the project plan or incorrect time estimates, this can negatively impact the migration.

Biting off too much too soon

One of the issues we have seen is when an organization goes all in a little too quickly. You need to make sure that you approach the migration in achievable components or chunks.

For example, select a small but significant process that is used by several other processes to migrate first. This approach allows you to make an impact and test the migration broadly while only migrating a small piece of your existing solution.  

Not using managed services

You have the opportunity to go with a Camunda 8 SaaS implementation or a self-managed edition (which can be installed on-premise or in the cloud). If you do decide to go with a self-managed implementation, this doesn’t mean that you cannot take advantage of various managed services with that implementation and have to run everything yourself.

You can use managed services for services like the following:

  • Elasticsearch
  • AWS S3
  • Postgres

It can simplify your architecture and is a good lesson others have learned as part of their migration.

Possible errors

If you haven’t adequately prepared your migration team with experience with the new version, you are positioning them to make mistakes and errors in the migration process. This can result in data loss, system crashes, and other issues that may have long-term consequences.

Avoiding support and assistance

No one expects you to be an expert on the two versions at one time. Camunda offers support for migrating customers with a workshop and consulting hours to assist in the process. These are both excellent opportunities to learn from people who have already done multiple migrations and therefore seen many of the successes and pitfalls to assist in the process.

Don’t forget to reach out for that support from Camunda.

Stay focused and plan your migration carefully

To mitigate these possible mistakes, you should prioritize:

  • Proper migration project planning
  • Comprehensive training programs
  • User engagement
  • Effective change management strategies during the migration process

Stay tuned for more migration information

We want to make any migration efforts as easy for you as possible, and we will be providing additional information about the migration process and tools we have to assist you and your organization make this transition.

In the meantime, check out these migration resources:

Keep an eye out for our next blog on migrating from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8, and be sure to reach out to connect with Camunda if you are interested in any assistance during your migration.

Editor’s Note: This post was originally published in March 2024, and has been updated in March 2025 for clarity and accuracy.

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Why Migrating to Camunda 8 is Good for Business https://camunda.com/blog/2024/03/why-migrating-camunda-8-good-for-business/ Wed, 13 Mar 2024 15:42:14 +0000 https://camunda.com/?p=102614 Migrating to Camunda 8 can deliver strong business value to your organization. Read on to learn why you should migrate to Camunda 8 and the business advantages you can achieve.

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There are many technical reasons (previously covered in the “Why Migrate from Camunda 7 to Camunda 8”  blog) why migrating to Camunda 8 can bring your company significant technical value, but there are also important business advantages to migrating as well.

Camunda enables organizations to streamline their business processes and workflows, leading to substantial cost savings and enhanced customer experiences for those implementing extensive process automation. Camunda fosters greater flexibility, agility, and performance, allowing organizations to swiftly realize value from their operations.

Why businesses choose to migrate

Although you can achieve some of these rewards with Camunda 7, many of them are only available through the use of Camunda 8. Let’s walk through how organizations are finding that migration to Camunda 8 is great for their business.

Solution acceleration

One of the keys to a successful business is the ability to accelerate your ability to build quality solutions.

With Camunda 7, the solution builders are most often developers and they can get you only part of the way to full solution acceleration. Effective collaboration with various departments is crucial, and utilizing tools such as Connectors and Form Builders, along with additional low-code features, is key. These low-code tools streamline the development workflow, thereby decreasing the time required to develop and launch process solutions. This approach enables a faster and more efficient release cycle for your business projects.

Camunda provides many Camunda Connectors within the modeler and in our Camunda Marketplace. In addition, Camunda customers have access to a wide range of partner-created Connectors as well to help accelerate solution development.

These solution accelerators enhance your business’s agility and adaptability, enabling you to swiftly respond to changing market demands while maintaining ongoing support for your operations. Organizations save over 20,000 hours of development with solution accelerators. By accelerating innovation, you position your business to seize upon opportunities, gain a competitive edge, and win in your marketplace.

Unifying business and IT

Camunda 8 offers enhanced collaboration features that enable your entire organization, not just the IT department, to embrace process orchestration. Camunda’s Web Modeler allows organizations to enable enriched collaboration opening models up to multiple departments based on security information. This wider aperture helps garner support from business leaders who recognize the significance and benefits of orchestration for the business. Without expanding beyond the confines of IT, your organization will be unable to advance to more sophisticated stages of the Process Orchestration Maturity Model, which is vital for your business’s growth, efficiency, and competitiveness.

By adopting Camunda 8, companies can streamline their business processes, significantly boosting overall efficiency. IT teams benefit from heightened agility, which in turn promotes a more productive collaboration with business stakeholders.

As a senior manager of finance at a Camunda customer conveys:

“Firstly, Camunda uses open technology, so we don’t really have a bottleneck in terms of specialty [skills]. Secondly, we can let the business own the business processes. We give [business stakeholders] the power to change processes as they wish, and that adds agility. … Our business partners drive a lot of innovation.”

This synergy allows for rapid refinement of processes, outpacing what is possible with other systems. The swift deployment of new processes not only elevates the customer experience but also contributes to capturing new business opportunities, ultimately driving enterprise growth.

AI innovations

Camunda 8 has a strategic focus on Artificial Intelligence (AI) integration, which means that transitioning from Camunda 7 to 8 places your organization at the forefront of AI technology. This shift promises accelerated collaboration, improved process efficiency, and greater insight into your business operations.

Camunda 8 includes Connectors for OpenAI, which not only facilitate the generation of text but also streamline the input screening and support the automation of certain decision-making processes. For detailed information on how the OpenAI Connector can optimize human workflows, please see Using the OpenAI Connector to facilitate human workflows.

The application of AI, however, is not limited to these functions. AI can revolutionize a wide variety of business processes and overall process solutions. Whether it’s creating user interfaces, aiding in decision-making, or detecting fraudulent activities, AI implementation reduces the margin of error, quickens operational cycles, and increases the accuracy of your processes. The adoption of AI allows for the automation of more processes, leading to smooth and efficient business functions.

Additionally, Camunda 8 offers machine learning (ML) ready datasets, which incorporate process data into your ML models, providing a comprehensive view of your business and enabling faster, more informed decision-making.

For further insights into how AI can enhance your business processes, explore our resource, “How Artificial Intelligence Can Enhance Your Business Process.”

Agility and time to value

Migrating to Camunda 8 can play a crucial role in helping businesses accelerate their time-to-value by improving efficiency, productivity, and innovation. We have already mentioned many tools that contribute to minimizing your time-to-value including AI innovations and Connectors, but there are others.

Companies that have adopted agile methodologies and DevOps practices reduce time from concept to deployment. With Camunda 8, organizations can implement automated CI/CD pipelines to streamline the development and release process to ensure quick and reliable software delivery.

One of our Camunda customer’s enterprise architects noted that:

“Agility is actually the most important factor from a business perspective. [With Camunda,] we can build features and deploy quickly.”

Camunda is known for its open architecture and adherence to standards. Camunda 8 is designed to be an open-source and source-available platform that allows organizations to model, automate, and optimize their business processes.

One Camunda customer states:

“[Our speed now] is a result of [Camunda’s] open technology because there’s a lower barrier to get into it. We can help to enable you, but you can learn it yourself. And then we don’t have a bandwidth issue. That’s a really big saver.”

Customers have noted that development time has decreased by 45% to make process changes.

With an open-source platform, companies are not locked into a proprietary solution. In addition, this openness encourages collaboration and innovation within the community.

Camunda also embraces industry standards like BPMN (Business Process Model and Notation) and DMN (Decision Model and Notation). These standards provide a common language and framework for describing and managing business processes.

In a recent interview, a Camunda customer said:

“Now, it’s easy. … It’s easy for us to manage [business] rules within DMN. And changing the business process — what is out there in production — [is easy]. … [Using Camunda] is easier for both sets of domain experts. Engineers find it very easy to collaborate with the business people, and business [users find] it very easy to collaborate with the engineering folks … because they are both speaking the same language.”

With Camunda’s extensibility through our APIs, developers can integrate the platform with different systems and tools. This flexibility is essential for organizations that may have existing technologies in place. The integration capabilities of Camunda 8 with a wide selection of Connectors―both within the product and available in our Camunda Marketplace―allow companies to leverage their existing IT infrastructure and data sources easily.

Because of this openness and our implementation approach, Camunda 8 supports a microservices architecture and containerized environments. This enables organizations to deploy and scale their process solutions in a more modular and flexible fashion emphasizing the flexibility and agility to pivot easily to meet market demands.

In summary, the investment of migrating to Camunda 8 contributes significantly to accelerating time-to-value for businesses by enhancing efficiency, streamlining processes, and fostering innovation across various aspects of their operations.

Unlock business value at scale

With real-time monitoring with Operate and Optimize, your company has visibility into process execution, allowing you to monitor the performance of workflows and identify bottlenecks. Data analytics help companies gain insights into process efficiency, enabling data-driven optimizations for continuous improvement.

Observing trends in your business processes is key to agility. For example, if you have an issues resolution process and you find that there is an increase in issues related to a single component of your product, you can circumvent additional claims by using this information to proactively reach out to customers who have this product or part in advance to improve customer service and enhance customer loyalty.

Customers interviewed in a recent Forrester study indicate that they have increased their customer satisfaction, collectively yielding $57.8 million in profits. Processes orchestrated by Camunda provide better customer service and higher customer retention rates.

Cloud-native―build for the future

Camunda 8 also offers a SaaS option, which features a cloud-native deployment for customers using containerization to enhance scalability allowing companies to adapt to growing workloads without significant infrastructure changes. Customers cannot get this cloud-native deployment with Camunda 7, making migration even more enticing.

An enterprise architect at one of our customers summed this up very well:

“We are building for the future. We don’t want to build it again in another 15 years, right? … And this was achievable using Camunda.”

Cloud-native applications are designed for high availability including built-in redundancy and failover mechanisms. This helps to ensure that applications remain accessible even if you experience a hardware failure or other issues. 

The chart below provides some examples of performance metrics from some of Camunda’s customers.

Camunda-performance-metrics

You can also optimize your resources with Camunda SaaS. The use of containers enables consistent deployment across different environments, reducing compatibility issues and ensuring resource efficiency.

As previously noted, cloud-native applications can easily integrate with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence, machine learning, and the Internet of Things (IoT), enabling businesses to stay competitive and innovative.

Note: You can implement Camunda 8 Self-Managed if that fits better in your architecture. With this approach, you can implement multi-tenancy in your architecture which provides scalability, cost savings, increased efficiency, and simplifies management and maintenance.

By adopting cloud-native Camunda SaaS, your business is positioning itself with the flexibility, speed, and efficiency needed to navigate the rapidly changing business landscape. It empowers organizations to focus on innovation, respond to market demands quickly, and scale operations seamlessly.

Stay tuned for more migration information

We want to make any migration efforts as easy for you as possible, and we will be providing additional information about the migration process and tools we have to assist you and your organization make this transition.

In the meantime, check out these migration resources:

Keep an eye out for our next blog on our migration methodology. If you are interested in migrating and want assistance from Camunda, be sure to reach out to Camunda Consulting.

Note: Quotes above can be found in the The Total Economic Impact™ Of Camunda For Enterprises, a commissioned study conducted by Forrester Consulting on behalf of Camunda.

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