How process orchestration paves the way for AI and hyperautomation

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A razor-sharp vision on the future of process orchestration and AI’s role within hyperautomation—that’s what Bastian Körber delivered to the attendees of Hyper ‘25. He began his talk with a critical look at the current AI hype. "AI is everywhere and is presented as the future, but we don't always see the actual business value yet." 

Still, according to him, Gen AI will undoubtedly play a bigger role in how companies structure their processes, bring products to market, and shape customer interactions. "We simply don't know yet what is coming, so the question is: how do we adapt our process architecture to be prepared for this?"

Spaghetti architecture

According to Körber, companies often struggle with outdated IT landscapes that have evolved over the years. The well-known "spaghetti architecture": a tangled web of systems that have been interconnected over time without a clear strategic direction. 

Adding AI or new technologies to this existing infrastructure without thoroughly revising the architecture leads to short-term fixes and increased complexity. "You can't just add AI as a new building block and think you're done. That will become unmanageable and unscalable. What companies need is a fundamentally different approach." An approach where process orchestration is at the core.

The limits of RPA and ERP

Before joining Camunda, Körber worked for a company that provided Robotic Process Automation (RPA) solutions. "RPA was initially presented as the solution for process automation. Companies could deploy bots to automate repetitive tasks and save time and costs." 

This worked well at first, but eventually, organizations hit their IT limits. "Maintaining all those bots became increasingly time-consuming. Systems changed, causing RPA processes to break. The solutions simply weren’t scalable, meaning innovation was slowed rather than accelerated."

A similar problem arose with ERP systems like SAP. Organizations customized standard processes to fit their workflows, resulting in complex custom solutions that were difficult to migrate to modern cloud environments. Camunda’s solution is to decouple business logic from integration logic, ensuring that processes remain flexible and can be easily adjusted without requiring a complete restructuring.

That’s why Process Orchestration

Process orchestration is about coordinating end-to-end processes across different systems, people, and devices. This means it’s not just about automating individual tasks but making the entire process transparent and manageable. "A company is more than a collection of separate tasks” says Körber. “True efficiency is only achieved when you manage and optimize processes as a whole." 

That’s precisely where process orchestration comes in. It allows companies to scale efficiently without adding unnecessary complexity and to continue using legacy systems without getting stuck in custom-built solutions. And last but not least: companies can integrate innovative technologies like AI without constantly having to overhaul their entire architecture.

During his presentation, he demonstrated how Camunda’s process orchestration platform works under the hood. He shared the five core principles on which the platform is built: modularity, openness, IT-business collaboration, scalability, and intelligence. A key aspect of Camunda’s approach is that the platform works with Business Process Model and Notation (BPMN). This ensures that both IT and business stakeholders use the same process models, reducing miscommunication and siloed operations.

Case study: Deutsche Telekom

A practical example that showcases the effectiveness of process orchestration is Deutsche Telekom’s transformation. Initially, the telecom giant had a patchwork of manual processes that were later automated using RPA. However, this led to an unsustainable maintenance burden, with bots constantly needing to be updated and scaled, Körber explains. "They built a quick-and-dirty solution packed with RPA bots. It worked—until it didn’t."

With Camunda, Deutsche Telekom decoupled business logic from integration logic. The company gradually replaced RPA-based automation with APIs and integrated AI, including ChatGPT, to enhance customer interactions. This resulted in a flexible, scalable, and future-proof solution.