CadenzaFlow Manifesto | Principles of Open, External & Enterprise-Ready Workflow Engines

Enterprise Workflow Management (EWfM) Manifesto

As PiA, we ground our strategy in a clear, principled Enterprise Workflow Management (EWfM) Manifesto.

In the rapidly evolving landscape of workflow automation, navigating the so critical ecosystem of so-called BPM engines and libraries can be deceptively complex. While many claim compliance with open standards like BPMN, they often conceal architectural pitfalls - from being tightly embedded within application runtimes to lacking essential operational controls: a clear No-Go for the Enterprise grade workflow platform user.

Some others claim scalability, but at the cost of operational manageability; others promise standards, but fail to deliver enterprise-grade autonomy and manageability.

EWfM Manifesto

EWfM Manifesto

1. External, Not Embedded - and Truly BPMN-Compliant We commit to Workflow Engines that are: external, decoupled, and can serve front-end/back-end centric. Workflow logic must be externally modeled, executed, governed and operationally managed — never entangled with internal application components or back-end services.
2. Enterprise-Grade and Open Source - No Trade-Offs Enterprise capabilities should never come at the cost of openness. We insist on open-source engines to ensure transparency, extensibility, and long-term control — vendor lock-in is not an option.
3. MACH-Aligned and Event-Driven by Design We align with MACH principles: Microservices, API-first, Cloud-native, Headless. Workflow task triggering must be asynchronous and event-driven, integrating seamlessly with distributed microservice ecosystems.
4. Operational Manageability Is Non-Negotiable Rich operational APIs for process control, observability, intervention, and SLA enforcement are essential. We reject any engine that sacrifices operational transparency for theoretical scalability.

As PiA, to avoid these traps for all our customer base and also out flagship products like DNext, we ground our strategy in a clear, principled Enterprise Workflow Management (EWfM) Manifesto:

To that end, we are proud to announce our decision to maintain and further develop our own dedicated branch of the Camunda engine called "CadenzaFlow", just like how Camunda was born as a branch of Activiti which preferred to shine on embedded, developer centric capabilities compromising Enterprise Grade capabilities.

This move reaffirms our commitment to open, external, enterprise-grade workflow orchestration - and ensures that our customers remain aligned with a future-proof, transparent, and operationally robust process automation platform.