New Powerhouse in Low-Code RPA: Microsoft Power Automate Assimilates ‘Softomotive’… Finally!

It’s been a chalk-and-cheese 18-months or so for everyone working in the low-code RPA industry. Rising competition, thanks to Open Source DevOps taking over enterprise DevOps, combined with complex process automation workflows and security frameworks– all led to certain chaos in the otherwise powerful and highly concentrated environment. The hardest part of working with RPA is its deployment and testing resilience. The pandemic-induced lockdown has provided the exact ingredient to create the magic potion to RPA— Microsoft Power Automate + Softomotive.

In the wee hours of 19 May, we got the news about Microsoft’s acquisition of Softomotive, a low-code RPA platform. Softomotive, the makers of WinAutomation will combine forces in the RPA to democratize low-code DevOps altogether.

For 15 years, Softomotive has made remarkable strides in the Robotic Process Automation (RPA) and Robotic Desktop Automation (RDA) sector.  It’s technically the most reliable and usable RPA/RDA solutions in the market. For those who have worked on RPA solutions such as WinAutomation would agree that augmenting RPA workflow frees up time and manual effort in various business processes.

At the time of his company’s acquisition, Marios Stavropoulos, Co-Founder & CEO, Softomotive, says “We have always believed in the notion of citizen developers and, since less than two percent of the world population can write code, we believe the greatest potential for both process improvement and overall innovation comes from business end-users.”

Today, by combining with Microsoft Power Automate, RPA DevOps teams have earned a formidable badge of honor that highlights many years of hard work and intelligence used to build a system that actually talks to you!

What Power Automate Does for RPA DevOps?

Power Automate is a Microsoft-owned service for DevOps teams. The solution helps to create automated workflows between your favorite apps, desktop tools, email, and services. These automation stacks enable in-sync synchronization of files, forward notifications, collect data and so much more.

Together with Power Automate, WinAutomation will provide customers additional options for RPA desktop authoring. Low-code RPA will turn ever-so simpler even as developers continue to solve unique Business Ops challenges by building top-of-line bots, assistants and other automation apps specific to various Windows-based tasks. The combined forces of Softomotive and Microsoft would enable RPA connectivity to many new apps and services including SAP and traditional green-screen terminal applications.

At the time of this announcement, Charles Lamanna, CVP, Citizen Application Platform, Microsoft said-

“All existing Power Automate customers can immediately benefit from WinAutomation to automate legacy tasks in the cloud or on their desktops. This is available at no additional cost to customers with an RPA attended license in Power Automate. Power Automate users can now take automation one step further with a rich desktop-based authoring experience.”

New DevOps for RPA Applications in a Real-Time Crisis

Self-service automation, CX and data analytics dashboards have become the new “ab-normal”. COVID-19-enforced lockdowns have allowed devops and engineers to get together “remotely” to fill into the most spacious rooms of improvement in RPA for desktop and mobile app automation. Power Automate and WinAutomation would extend their capabilities to build RPA bots that can be used to authentication browser-based authoring apps as well as a new desktop app.

As UI UX definitions continue to change every quarter, if not every month, this unique newly-formed RPA combo would legitimize the need to further expand the reach of every desktop experience into deeper pockets of business ops. Connectors and applications for SAP, Citrix and Java would receive better UI automation drivers to transform the existing desktop automation experience standards.

I am using an adjective now, for the RPA powerhouse combo — It’s Pluralistic.

With WinAutomation, Power Automate DevOps teams can multi-task at various levels of workflows and automation, knowing exactly what is happening in the complementary executions. These executions wouldn’t affect the individual results– but only improve the efficiency of apps and bots by reducing latency. The power of scaling up from the bottom has magnified with the transfusion of WinAutomation platform into Microsoft’s Power Automate API automation to UI automation.

Offering thousands of additional features from Softomotive. Power Automate users are expected to further build support in the low-code bot development.

Microsoft has also acquired Metaswitch Networks, expanding approach to empower operators and partner with network equipment providers to deliver on the promise of 5G.

(To share your startup stories on 5G, IoT and Cloud computing, please write to us at sghosh@martechseries.com)