Camunda 8 Upgrade Benefits for Businesses

While C8 boasts a whole new architecture and many upgraded features, stakeholders may not be impressed with the changes since they are less interested in how it works than in what business value it brings. Here is a quick overview explaining how C8 improvements translate into measurable business benefits.

• Higher performance, security, and scalability

Camunda process migration to the distributed architecture of the new Zeebe engine will allow businesses to process larger transaction volumes with minimal latency, as C8 ensures significantly higher performance and scalability than C7. The engine doesn’t depend on an external database, which allows for the elimination of possible bottlenecks, and it is separated from application solutions, which makes it less vulnerable to attacks. If you need to handle heavier workloads, you just add as many processing units as you need and take advantage of data partitioning applied for parallel processing across multiple nodes. If one unit goes down, another one will replace it without any data loss, thanks to data replication.

• Improved response time, customer experience, and resource utilisation

C8 supports the asynchronous execution of processes, which is especially useful for complex and long-running tasks. Activities dependent on external interactions and prone to timeouts can run in the background without blocking the whole workflow, resulting in faster response times and keeping resources available for processing new requests.

• Deployment aligned with your business needs

Camunda 7 to Camunda 8 migration unlocks the possibility to move to the SaaS model with all technical setups handled by Camunda professionals. However, C8 also supports self-managed installations, whether hosted in public/private clouds or on a company’s hardware. It even enables hybrid modes with some processes running on private networks while staying connected to a SaaS cluster. The new architecture makes it easy to adapt the platform to specific business needs based on compliance requirements, budget considerations, and other factors.

• Faster time to market and higher cost efficiency

One of the advantages of migrating to Camunda 8 is that it allows for improved citizen developer and business user involvement in process automation and management. With real-time collaboration tools like Web Modeler and multiple reusable components, such as connectors, process blueprints, and element templates, low-code developers and even non-technical stakeholders can contribute greatly to company process automation and free up pro developers from lower-value tasks. The possibility to engage a broader range of personas in creating and running process orchestration solutions translates into increased efficiency, reduced development time, and significant cost savings.

• Higher developer productivity

Apart from embracing the low-code approach to remove the load from pro developers, the Camunda platform features many opportunities to streamline the developer experience and boost the productivity of IT teams. It offers simple installation on-premise or in a cloud with a unified API that ensures faster developer onboarding and supports popular development tools like Helm charts, Kubernetes, and Docker containers. It allows developers to use various programming languages beyond Java, including .NET, Python, and Ruby, and quickly build multiple functionalities without stumbling over tech stack discrepancies.

• Better decision making

Unlike C7, which offers process intelligence as a separate tool requiring extra installation and configuration, the new Camunda platform features the built-in Optimize module for process performance monitoring. It collects historical data and turns it into meaningful stats, charts, graphs, and heatmaps displayed through customisable dashboards. To make process optimisation even simpler for business analysts, C8 provides dashboard templates and reusable reports, which can be tailored to different audiences and easily shared with other stakeholders.

One of the main distinctions of C8 is that it removes at least part of the pressure from IT departments and allows for driving broader automation by engaging non-technical users and simplifying their collaboration with hardcore developers. Apart from the above-mentioned low-code opportunities, the platform leverages AI tools and services to facilitate business process management for both parties and maximise the efficiency of their automation efforts.

Benefits of Camunda 8 Migration: AI Is Already Here

AI models and ML algorithms are powerful tools that can greatly reduce time spent on repetitive tasks, eliminate human error, improve business efficiency, and relieve professionals from tedious work, bringing back engagement and increasing productivity. While C7 was built before the artificial intelligence boom and, thus, it is not naturally friendly to this technology, C8 was designed as an AI-ready platform from the get-go, and its users can benefit from this in several ways.

Easily integrate AI in your existing process resource: https://camunda.com/ccon-video/welcome-keynote/

• Hassle-free AI integrations

Intelligent automation involves using multiple AI tools, from chatbots based on large language models to automatic document processing with intelligent character recognition. Camunda 8 migration gives access to pre-built connectors that ensure simple integration with popular AI services like OpenAI, Hugging Face, and Amazon SageMaker. Businesses can optimise a wide array of their workflows with virtual assistants, automated text classification, AI-generated recommendations, and other smart tools while letting Camunda assemble these local solutions into end-to-end processes and manage them efficiently from start to finish. Developers can also benefit from Camunda’s blueprints, which exemplify the use of AI in various scenarios, such as predictive batch processing and customer enquiry routing.

• Smooth AI-led process modelling

The Camunda 8 upgrade process results in unlocking the Copilot feature in the Camunda Modeler. When designing BPMN models, users can get AI-generated suggestions regarding the elements best suited for their workflows and insert corresponding templates with the click of a button. The actionable prompts allow users to create and edit business processes faster while applying efficient designs based on best practices and existing implementations. The feature is especially useful for those users who are new to BPMN modelling, contributing to faster onboarding.

• Simple AI-assisted form building

Both C7 and C8 use forms to create tasks for people when human intervention in automated workflows is required, yet only Camunda 8 migration allows users to generate the forms faster with another AI-driven feature at hand. Camunda’s intuitive drag-and-drop form builder is complemented by the AI Form Generator, delivering layouts for human tasks based on natural language requests. Users just need to enter their use case description into the generator field to get a starter form, which can be further customised as required. The layouts come with all elements matching the description, including labels, variable names, and even decorators.

• Enhanced process optimisation with ML-ready datasets

In addition to making the Optimize feature available by default, Camunda process migration will save you time and money on data preparation for your business process analytics. While the earlier Optimize editions only delivered basic data, such as identifiers, start/end dates, and variables, the new version can export datasets that are much richer and already organised for use in ML algorithms. Thus, C8 removes the time-consuming data preparation stage from your ML training cycle and allows business analysts to immediately feed the pre-processed data into their BI tools. Thanks to this C8 capability, they can derive valuable insights and predictions for business process optimisation in the most cost-efficient way.

• Faster Camunda navigation with AI-powered search functionality

Camunda boasts a vast knowledge base with many guidelines and tips scattered across official documentation, blog articles, and forum discussions. To enhance the user experience and make it easier to find answers to technical questions, the platform launched a chatbot powered by a large language model. Now, users don’t need to sift through thousands of pages to get the information they require — they can receive comprehensive answers aggregated from numerous Camunda resources by Docs AI.

Not only does C8 leverage AI to improve the platform’s own usability, but it also empowers enterprise-wide AI adoption for faster and more efficient business process automation. The crucial role of AI in modern workflow optimisation and C8’s wider opportunities for AI implementation were among the topics covered at our Camunda breakfast event. Camunda experts also talked about best migration practices, as the transition requires a good understanding of the differences between the platforms and the specifics of process deployment on both the old and new versions. For businesses to get properly prepared for the migration and enjoy a smooth transition, it is recommended that they turn to a certified partner of Camunda that have engineers trained in process orchestration on the new platform.