Cutting Licensing Costs: The Activiti to Camunda Migration
Migrating production workflow systems from Alfresco Enterprise Activiti to Open Source Camunda BPMN solution to reduce operational costs while ensuring smooth workflow operations and zero downtime in production.
Cutting Licensing Costs: The Activiti to Camunda Migration
Migrating production workflow systems from Alfresco Enterprise Activiti to Open Source Camunda BPMN solution to reduce operational costs while ensuring smooth workflow operations and zero downtime in production.
Large-Scale Enterprise Migration Under Tight Timeline
The migration project involved more than 200 BPMN models, Decision Tables and User Tasks in less than 3 months along with the Dockerization of Camunda deployment. The sheer volume of model conversion, tight delivery timeline, and unknowns discovered during initial analysis made the migration highly challenging.
Complex Technical Challenges
Several technical challenges were identified during the migration process, including conversion of User Task Forms, support for uploading files up to 1G size to AWS S3 bucket, LDAP integration with offline support, and plugin support for showing completed User Tasks which was not available in the Camunda Community Edition.
IMPACT
200+
BPMN Models
Why Camunda?
The Community edition of Camunda was chosen as the preferred solution because Camunda has been forked from Activiti, providing a high level of similarity that made the transition easier. Most of the required features were available in the Community edition, APIs were available to support custom implementations such as LDAP integration, and an active community provided strong support for resolving migration challenges.
Technology Stack
Comprehensive Migration Strategy
A systematic approach was followed to migrate 200+ BPMN models, decision tables, and user tasks from Activiti to Camunda. The solution included automated model conversion, custom enterprise integrations, Dockerized deployment, and implementation of missing enterprise-grade features such as offline LDAP support, large file uploads, and custom Camunda plugins.
Process & Forms Migration
Automated conversion of BPMN models and user task forms from Activiti XML/JSON formats to Camunda-compatible BPMN and embedded HTML forms
Custom Enterprise Features
LDAP offline caching, 1G file upload support to AWS S3, and custom plugin development to extend Camunda Community Edition capabilities
Dockerized Deployment
Containerized Camunda deployment using Docker for improved scalability, consistency, and simplified environment management
- Docker
- Scalable
Process Diagrams
Processes were exported from Activiti as XML files and used within Camunda Modeler to create BPMN files compatible with Camunda runtime
Service Tasks
Java classes were modified to extend JavaDelegate, enabling access to process variables and execution context through DelegateExecution
User Task Forms
JSON forms exported from Activiti were converted into HTML files using a custom script and embedded directly into BPMN models
Decision Tables
Decision tables were exported as XML from Activiti and recreated as DMN files using Camunda Modeler
LDAP Integration
Custom LDAP Service Provider implemented to cache users and groups in a local database, enabling offline authentication support
Large File Upload
Implemented a separate Spring-based endpoint using multipart upload to efficiently handle 1G file uploads to AWS S3 and store S3 references
Custom Plugin
Developed Camunda Task List Plugin to query and display completed user tasks not supported in the Community Edition by default
Successful Migration with Cost Reduction
The project successfully migrated more than 200 BPMN models, decision tables, and user tasks from Alfresco Enterprise Activiti to Camunda Community Edition within a 3-month timeline. The migration achieved significant operational cost reduction while maintaining production stability, zero downtime, and full functional parity with the legacy enterprise system.
Before
- Alfresco Enterprise Activiti (Licensed)
- High operational costs
- Limited customization options
- Enterprise license dependency
- Standard file upload limitations
After
- Open Source Camunda Community Edition
- Reduced operational costs
- Custom LDAP offline support
- 1G file upload to AWS S3
- Custom plugins for enhanced functionality
- Dockerized deployment
- 200+ models successfully migrated
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