The Challenge

Large organizations can face substantial technical and financial risks when foundational, widely deployed open-source software undergoes license changes, product deprecation, or other disruptive actions. One such scenario occurred when Camunda 7 Community Edition reached end-of-life.

As a platform deeply embedded across financial services to power mission-critical workflows, organizations were suddenly left with a choice: absorb enterprise upgrade fees, risk running unsupported infrastructure, or allow individual teams to fragment into costly, bespoke standalone operations.

The Fluxnova Solution 

Rather than addressing this challenge in isolation, several financial institutions came together through FINOS to build a community-governed alternative for enterprise process orchestration. Originally started as a fork of Camunda 7 and now on Version 3.0, Fluxnova has evolved into a feature-rich, collaboratively developed open source platform that provides infrastructure continuity, shared technology ownership, and a sustainable path forward for organizations with critical process orchestration needs.

“Fluxnova delivers a sustainable, community-driven solution for enterprise workflow orchestration. For Deutsche Bank, the migration was handled as a seamless version upgrade, allowing us to rapidly scale uFlow as a strategic shared service across the bank. By contributing engineering capacity, we directly benefit from shared development while actively shaping the platform’s evolution.”

– Nichola Hammerton, Head of Group Architecture, Deutsche Bank

Deutsche Bank’s Migration Success

At Deutsche Bank, the transition from Camunda 7 to Fluxnova has been managed as a standard version upgrade. Fluxnova was immediately embedded at the heart of uFlow, the bank’s strategic workflow platform, managed under a centralized Center of Excellence (CoE) model.

Delivered as a strategic shared service, uFlow completely removes infrastructure complexity for application teams across the bank. Rather than building and operating their own workflow infrastructure, teams can bring their BPMN process models and deploy them directly onto a centrally managed platform. The uFlow team handles infrastructure, configuration, upgrades, and ongoing maintenance, including regular Fluxnova version updates.

Wide adoption across the bank demonstrates the value of this shared-service approach. Teams from a wide range of business areas, including the Corporate Bank, Investment Bank, Finance, Infrastructure, and the Private Bank are using uFlow to successfully orchestrate complex processes. The model is also particularly valuable for smaller initiatives, giving them a faster, lower-friction route to production without requiring each team to stand up and manage its own workflow infrastructure.

Industry Value

By contributing engineering capacity to Fluxnova, Deutsche Bank is helping advance a community-governed open source platform for enterprise workflow orchestration. This creates value beyond one institution by giving financial services organizations a shared foundation they can collectively improve, influence, and rely on for long-term continuity.

• Shared ownership and governance: Fluxnova gives participating organizations a voice in the platform’s direction, reducing reliance on a single commercial vendor roadmap.
• Collaborative innovation: A multi-organization development model allows common workflow orchestration challenges to be solved once and improved for the benefit of the wider community.
• Long-term sustainability: Community-led development provides a more durable path for maintaining and modernizing critical process orchestration capabilities.
  

Deutsche Bank Value

For Deutsche Bank, uFlow turns this open source strategy into practical operational and economic value. Delivered as a centrally managed shared service, it reduces complexity for application teams while improving consistency, control, and speed.

• License cost avoidance: Deutsche Bank avoided commercial enterprise license fees by adopting Fluxnova.
• Influencing strategic direction: Investing internal engineering capacity to the open source project ensures Deutsche Bank can influence the project roadmap.
• Enterprise adoption and standardization: uFlow, underpinned by Fluxnova, is already used across numerous teams spanning several business areas, including the Corporate Bank, Investment Bank, Private Bank and horizontal functions such as Finance and Infrastructure. Its formal recognition as the Bank’s strategic workflow tool is helping reduce duplication, lower technology debt, and minimize operational risk.
• Faster route to production: Centralized infrastructure allows application teams, especially smaller initiatives, to bypass typical procurement, setup, and infrastructure management bottlenecks.

Learn More and Get Involved

Visit fluxnova.finos.org to learn more, find a meeting, join the conversation, and sign up for updates.

Explore the repository and contribute on GitHub: github.com/finos/fluxnova-bpm-platform

Learn More

fluxnova.finos.org 

Founding Maintainers

Fidelity Investments,
NatWest, Capital One,
Deutsche Bank

About Fluxnova

Fluxnova is an orchestration platform delivering resilient, standards-based process automation with BPMN/DMN. It enables enterprises to modernize workflows, embed compliance-as-code, and maintain control without vendor lock-in. Designed for regulated environments, Fluxnova is transparent, auditable, and future-ready.