Camunda 8 — A Next-Generation process orchestrator
While many businesses struggle to drive innovation, companies using Camunda continue to gain a competitive edge through fast adaptation to ever-changing market conditions and continuous process improvement and automation. In the first part of our article, we will explain what Camunda 8 is, what its main benefits are, and how it differs from Camunda 7.
What Is Camunda 8?
Camunda 8 is a potent tool for business process management. It helps automate, optimise, and streamline routine workflows by orchestrating tasks executed by people, systems, and devices. Unlike ordinary automation tools that can handle only a simple series of steps, C8 easily copes with complex business processes involving an intricate mix of digital solutions interspersed with human tasks. It connects local automation with end-to-end processes, making all the parts and steps visible to users and enabling agile management through the entire journey.
To deliver the next-level automation and ensure efficient management regardless of business process complexity, the Camunda platform features:
- BPMN modeler. With its standardised and easy-to-grasp diagrams, collaboration between business users and IT teams becomes a breeze. The end-to-end models of complex business processes can be designed quickly and with little effort, accelerating time to market and increasing everyone’s satisfaction.
- Cloud-native architecture. C8 offers a distributed architecture that doesn’t rely on a single workflow node or a central database. The platform ensures good availability and excellent flexibility, letting users scale up as their process orchestration maturity grows.
- Elastic workflow engine. Businesses can start implementing process automation in small increments and then expand their use cases to hyper-automation — Camunda’s engine handles huge loads like payments or trade processing perfectly well and allows companies to apply process orchestration to various workflows, from non-core activities to key business processes.
- Easy integrations. The Camunda platform features a wide range of ready-to-go connectors for seamless integration with data sources, protocols, cloud computing services, analytics tools, AI models, and more. It also gives IT teams the possibility to quickly develop custom connectors for legacy systems, home-grown software, and other digital tools already in use.
- Multiple deployment options. Users can choose between on-premise, cloud, and hybrid deployment options, as well as SaaS or self-managed installations. This flexibility allows businesses to find the best solution depending on their specific needs and existing infrastructure.
- Developer-friendly framework. It’s an open-source platform that supports a language-agnostic approach and provides APIs, SDKs, clients, detailed guides, and other resources to make developers’ lives easier and speed up development. It readily integrates with CI/CD pipelines and aligns with modern cloud engineering practices.
- Solution accelerators. While supporting pro-code development to better match the complexity of real-life scenarios, C8 helps engage non-technical users and accelerate the implementation of process orchestration with some low-code features, reusable components, AI-generated prompts, and collaborative tools like Web Modeler.
All in all, C8 is built for high resilience, process velocity, and scalability, thus empowering businesses to adapt faster to customer expectations, market conditions, and regulations.
Quick Camunda 7 vs Camunda 8 Overview
While C7 was a hit back in 2013, it was built before the rise of cloud computing, AI, and microservices, which made its design less suitable for modern requirements. This led to the platform’s redesign and the launch of C8 in 2022. Nowadays, C8 is the flagship Camunda product, and we are going to highlight its major differences from the previous version, with more details following in Part Three of this article.
Actually, C8 is not a C7 update but rather a whole new platform built with all the advantages and disadvantages of its predecessor in mind:
- Shift from a monolithic architecture to microservices. C7 was built with a monolithic architecture, which hampers scaling and updating individual components. C8 uses a microservice architecture where each component can be deployed and scaled independently, thus resulting in a more flexible and resilient system.
- New process execution model. C8 replaces the traditional BPMN engine used in C7 with Zeebe, a high-performance stream processing engine optimised for scaling in cloud environments. Zeebe supports asynchronous process execution and horizontal scaling, which enables the simultaneous handling of millions of processes.
- Fault-tolerant clustering implementation. C8 supports clustering, which increases system fault tolerance and provides the possibility to scale based on business requirements. These capabilities are limited in C7, making users tinker with complex configurations to achieve high availability.
These are by far not all the positive changes implemented in C8, yet it is not free from shortcomings. Some users find its architecture more complicated compared with C7, and some pine over certain features available in the initial product, such as better support for conditional and cancel events. While the Camunda team continues to improve the functionality of C8, both Camunda versions deserve to have their own fanbases, but there is one more consideration to factor in — the C7 end-of-life.
Why Businesses Should Migrate to Camunda 8 Before October 2025
The Camunda team has officially announced that a final release for C7 is planned for October 2025, meaning that regular updates and technical support for this version will no longer be available for most users. After this date, the team is going to release some patches, but only for the Enterprise Edition (till April 2027) and owners of the Extended Support package (till 2030). Then, C7 will be entirely discontinued.
So, staying on C7 beyond October 2025 entails the risk of encountering technical difficulties, security vulnerabilities, and compatibility issues. C7 users are advised to start planning their migration to C8 as early as possible to avoid these potential problems and take advantage of the new platform’s benefits:
- Long-term support and development. Since C8 is now the flagship product, all support efforts and development prospects are focused on this version. Migrating to it guarantees access to new features, improvements, and security updates for years to come.
- Compatibility with modern technologies. C8 is designed with modern standards and technologies in mind, making it more suitable for integration with existing IT systems and new technology solutions, such as containerisation and cloud computing.
Despite the obvious benefits of moving from C7 to C8, the Camunda versions have plenty of differences that make the shift quite complicated. It might be difficult to take the plunge, and it definitely requires careful planning and preparation. The importance of migration planning and best practices in its implementation are the points discussed at our Camunda breakfast event. A good grasp of the specifics of process deployment and technical implementation on C7 and C8 is the key to successful migration. That’s why we recommend contacting a certified Camunda partner who can help you plan carefully and organise the transition efficiently.