Back to the Future - Process is the Key
CamundaCon 2024 in NYC shows the path forward
Attending CamundaCon in NYC last week was like a reunion of sorts:
Reuniting with my BP3 team that is flung far and wide around the world - some of us gathering in New York City to meet clients and partners on our journey.
Reuniting with Camunda execs and product and marketing folks, and partner engagement team, to talk about all things process orchestration and automation
Reuniting with a bunch of people who, for lack of a better word, are building businesses around the idea of a process.
Reuniting with folks like Sandy Kemsley - a fellow writer and follower of all things process!
And the idea of building software and business around processes is coming back into vogue. As Camunda reported on stage, they have surpassed the $100M ARR milestone - moving process orchestration into an early mainstream effort. Truly massive companies are adoption this technology and working with Camunda and its partners to transform the way their businesses - or their business software - operates.
Jakob alluded to the current vogue terms of Agentic Automation and Agentic AI, and why process is a foundational organizing principle that tames these types of efforts. I personally find these “Agentic” terms off-putting: what their proponents are trying to say is that you don’t have to design how your AI or Automations work - you can just throw some spaghetti at the wall and let AI figure it out for you. It just smacks of being intellectually lazy at best, and intellectually dishonest with yourself about what you’re doing. Give your business and its processes the respect they deserve and think about how you want it to work! Design your experiences, don’t just “let them happen.”
Camunda’s flagship product, Camunda 8, is adding key functionality that makes Camunda a player in a wider market context:
BPMN is bread and butter functionality, which Camunda continues to invest in
DMN for decision management continues to improve
RPA - a new offering for “just good enough” RPA-style automations that are easy included in your processes.
IDP - for managing document processing in the context of your process, triggering or resulting from the processes you build, or interfacing over the course of those processes.
Business solutions space - partnering with their best partners to go to market. this is a particular announcement different than the others - and something only possible because Camunda has put in the hard work over many years to build a very capable partner engagement ecosystem.
Camunda + SAP - a strong offering to integrate Camunda with SAP - which is really smart, given that just about any company with complexity has, at some point, put SAP in. In addition, there’s a move toward S/4Hana and clean core implementations which leans more into having the business processes that are custom/proprietary to your business sitting outside of and integrated with core SAP, rather than customizing SAP.
AI - how to use AI to build processes more quickly, how to plug AI into your processes, and how to use processes to improve your AI.
The other change in the context of the market is that Forrester and Gartner are paying attention to process technologies again. Gartner recently put out a report on Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies - BOAT - arguing that you need these foundational technologies to deliver transformational change in your business
A great way to get a read on what happened at CamundaCon is to read Sandy Kemsley’s blog - starting here, but this post dives into customer case studies which I think is a good read.
The Day 2 keynote dove into technical details to support all of these changes. Daniel Meyer and Bernd Rücker make a good Batman and Robin presenting routine - and really drives home the point that Camunda rightly believe they have the best process orchestration foundation on the market. They are now addressing the adjacent technology opportunities to bring value to that foundation without requiring as many complicated multi-vendor relationships and negotiations. No one is expecting a client to ditch a massive investment in another software platform, but there are cases where RPA or IDP software is lightly used, and might be obviated by adding those capabilities to an existing process orchestration capability.
One question often posed to me by folks in this space is - won’t one of these other vendors in RPA or IDP or a walled garden build the right process orchestrating technology (or something better) to compete with Camunda? It is tempting to focus on the technical differentiation or moat - but I tend to focus on the different mental models these other companies have of the world. In their mental models, process orchestration is a really minor feature and not that important to getting the job done. In Camunda’s world view it is the most important foundation for getting the job done.
You might correctly guess that I’m in the camp that thinks process is critical. If your business mattes, your process matters. If your process matters, then your process engine / orchestration matters. Choose wisely. I think Camunda lives in the blindspot of these other software companies for the time being.
Camunda will shortly release video replays of the sessions. One that I will highly recommend watching is Scott Wilger’s (Charter) presentation alongside Sergii Tsymbal of BP3, on the work that we did together at Charter to deliver an impressively valuable solution for construction management. Links to come when they are available!
I really enjoyed connecting and re-connecting with peers at CamundaCon. I don’t get to attend too many live conferences post-COVID, so really appreciate the ones that I do get to attend. Looking forward to seeing how the market evolves over the next 12 months with these great advances by Camunda and Camunda’s partner ecosystem, it is going to be exciting stuff.
One more thing… Austin Technology Council is hosting the Annual C-Suite Summit and Industry Think Tank - I can’t recommend it highly enough, and I will be there. Thom Singer has done an amazing job building ATC over the last 3 years, and it is our job to repay that with our support - so much work to do in Austin tech yet to come!
Trust me, just do it!
This is the link to register: https://atc.ticketbud.com/2024-c-suite-summit-and-industry-think-tank - more info below:
2024 C-Suite Summit and Industry Think Tank
Monday, October 28, 2024
01:00 PM - 06:00 PM
St. Edwards University - Ragsdale Center Ballroom
3001 South Congress Avenue, Austin, TX, USA
The C-Suite Summit and Industry Think Tank in 2024 is going to be a "Don't Miss Event" for tech company leaders. We will have leaders from tech companies, and some sponsors, in a room for interesting conversations and discussions about our local tech ecosystem.
If you are a local technology company (Headquartered in Central Texas OR have an office in the Austin area) you should assign one or more leaders to come lend your voice to this unique meeting.
This years event will be held at St. Edward's University from 1:00 - 6:00 PM. In these five hours you will hear from some brilliant leaders and have the opportunity to participate in the "Industry Think Tank". The think tank portion was the top rated session from last year's CE)/C-Suite Summit...and local leaders asked that we had more time for these in depth conversations at the round tables.
Opening Keynote Speaker - Razat Gaurav, CEO - Planview
Closing Keynote Speaker - John Nehme, President / CEO - Allies Against Slavery
The event starts after lunch (no lunch will be served, but we will have snacks) and will conclude with a great happy hour reception.
Sponsors:
St Edward's University
MUFG
Pierpont Communications
Weaver
Precina
(and more to come)
Community Partners:
Opportunity Austin
Austin Chamber of Commerce
Austin Women in Technology
Austin Tech Week 2024
Association for Corporate Growth
DivInc
Austin Technology Incubator
Tech Ranch
Y Texas
Hope for the future: "The idea of building software and business around processes is coming back into vogue..." 😃