Camunda
Camunda is a German software company that develops a platform for process orchestration and business process automation.
History
Camunda was founded in Berlin, Germany, in 2008 by Jakob Freund and Bernd Rücker as a business process management consulting firm under the name Camunda Services GmbH. The company’s name is a portmanteau of capere and munda.Camunda 7 was an originally commercial workflow management system, which was based on Activiti, a free business process management system. Alongside Alfresco, Camunda was one of the biggest contributors of Activiti. On 18 March 2013, the further development of Camunda was spun off from the development of Activiti.
In December 2018, Camunda received €25 million in Series A funding from Highland Europe. In March 2021, Camunda raised €82 million in a Series B funding round led by Insight Partners together with Highland Europe.
In April 2022, Camunda released Camunda Platform 8 as a successor to Camunda Cloud, incorporating the cloud-native workflow and decision engine Zeebe.
In May 2024, Camunda introduced artificial intelligence features to its process orchestration platform. Additionally, the company released Camunda Copilot, which provides process modeling suggestions, generates BPMN diagrams from natural language prompts, creates documentation, and includes a form builder. It also provides connectors for integrating AI endpoints into processes.
In October 2024, SAP integration and the integration of task automation capabilities, including Robotic Process Automation and Intelligent Document Processing, were announced. The same year, Camunda achieved revenues of over 100 million euros.
Camunda was included in Viva Technology's "Top 100 next unicorns" list in 2023 and 2024.
In April 2025, Camunda integrated agentic orchestration capabilities into the platform, allowing AI agents to dynamically control processes.
Product and services
Overview
Camunda provides tools for creating process and decision models and for operating deployed models in production environments. The platform includes a workflow engine compliant with the Business Process Model and Notation standard and a decision engine compliant with the Decision Model and Notation standard, which can also be used as a standalone component. It can be used as an architectural component in distributed systems through a REST API. External endpoints, including AI services, can be integrated via Connectors.Camunda has been deployed in companies such as Universal Music Group, Commerzbank, GLS, NASA, Telekom and Audi.
Process orchestration is the main topic at the biannual CamundaCon, which is organized by Camunda. Other conferences such as JAX or Devoxx are also regularly dedicated to the topic.
License
Since October 2024, Camunda has released all components of Camunda 8 Self-Managed, including Zeebe, Operate Tasklist, Optimize, and Identity, under Camunda License 1.0. This license allows access to the source code of these components and the free use for development and testing purposes, but requires a production license for deployment.Features
Camunda consists of a number of components and applications that are used together to define and execute business processes:The Camunda Modeler desktop application and web modeler allow developers to create and edit BPMN process diagrams and DMN decision tables.
External endpoints can be integrated into processes via Connectors, which are pre-built and customizable packages consisting of BPMN elements and API templates. With the release of Camunda 8.3, Camunda Marketplace was added, allowing users to share and download additional Connectors for various business systems.
Created files are deployed in the Camunda engine, which use a BPMN parser to transform BPMN 2.0 XML files, and DMN XML files, into Java objects, and implements BPMN 2.0 constructs with a set of BPMN Behavior implementations.
Typical use cases for the Camunda BPMN Workflow Engine can be microservices orchestration and human task management.
The Camunda DMN Decision Engine executes business-driven decision tables. It is pre-integrated with the Workflow Engine but can be used as a standalone application via REST or inside Java applications.
Camunda's additional web applications provide the following tools for developers and business users:
- Operate: A tool for technical process operations enabling users to monitor workflows and decisions in production, to analyze and solve technical problems.
- Tasklist: Allows end users to work on assigned tasks and provides additional visibility when using the Camunda Workflow Engine for human task management.
- Optimize: An analytics and reporting tool to identify errors and bottlenecks in workflow processes.
- Modeler: A collaborative modeling tool allowing multiple users to create, edit and specify BPMN process diagrams.
- Console: Allows users to manage Camunda web applications or REST API users. Existing user management can be integrated via LDAP.