Essential Insights from the 2024 Gartner® Critical Capabilities for SOAPs Report

On September 23, 2024, Gartner released the first Critical Capabilities for Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms (SOAP) report, providing crucial insights into the ever-evolving landscape of automation and orchestration solutions. This report not only highlights the evolution of the SOAP market but also underscores the essential role these platforms play in driving innovation across various industries.

Why This Report Matters

As organizations worldwide continue to embrace digital transformation, the demand for automation platforms that manage complex workflows and workloads across hybrid environments is growing exponentially. SOAP solutions are foundational to enabling organizations to manage data pipelines, orchestrate IT and business workflows, and integrate with DevOps toolchains. These platforms also support emerging technologies, including generative AI, to enhance efficiency and decision-making.

The report evaluates 13 vendors against 14 Critical Capabilities, examining how well they align with key Use Cases such as IT workload automation, workflow orchestration, citizen automation, data orchestration, and DevOps automation. For infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders, this report serves as a critical resource for assessing how SOAP solutions can meet their current and future automation needs, optimizing costs and expanding automation strategies.

Importance of Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms

SOAPs are essential for I&O leaders who need to design, implement, and orchestrate business services across hybrid environments. While traditional workload automation focused on IT-centric tasks, SOAPs extend their reach into workflow orchestration, data pipelines, citizen automation, and DevOps. With their robust capabilities, SOAPs can address increasing complexity, enabling enterprises to scale and integrate various business and IT processes across the cloud and on-premises systems.

By 2027, Gartner predicts that 90% of organizations will use SOAPs to orchestrate workloads and data pipelines. This trajectory illustrates the growing dependency on automation platforms to maintain efficiency, agility, and competitiveness in modern IT landscapes.

Critical Capabilities and Key Use Cases

The 2024 Critical Capabilities for SOAPs defines 14 Critical Capabilities that Gartner uses to evaluate providers in five unique Use Cases. These capabilities, weighted differently for each Use Case, provide insights into how well each vendor’s solution meets current business needs.

SOAP Critical Capabilities

• Artifact management supports the validation, versioning, and security of automation tasks, such as jobs, scripts, and workflows. It may also integrate with standard tools like GitHub or GitLab.
• Automation manages the execution, integration, and coordination of tasks and workflows across various environments, including DevOps, ERP, hybrid/multi-cloud, ITSM, and mainframe systems.
• Orchestration allows users to create and manage workflows through forms, low-code tools, and development environments, with options to import/export workflows between different platforms.
• Execution handles triggers (timers, events) from connected systems to start and manage workflows.
• Design and development support different users in designing and developing workflows for automation.
• Integration connects with diverse technology systems, including mainframes, cloud platforms, distributed systems, and SaaS solutions.
• Intelligent automation uses AI, including generative AI, to understand data and optimize workflows.
• Monitoring and observability provide real-time visibility into workflow performance via dashboards, logs, and metrics to identify and prevent potential issues or SLA breaches.
• Planning and optimization assess and test workflows, offering suggestions to improve performance.
• Platform ecosystem expands functionality through APIs, SDKs, and integration with community resources and internal catalogs.
• Resilience and high availability ensure workflows continue or restart after system failures.
• Scalability and flexibility scale resources up or down to meet changing workload demands.
• Security and Compliance supports role-based access, credential management, secure communication, and data privacy to meet regulatory standards.
• Value Determination measures the cost savings and other benefits delivered by the platform.

SOAP Use Cases

Using the capabilities above, Gartner highlights five primary Use Cases that exemplify the diversity and flexibility of SOAPs across different organizational needs: 

• IT Workload Automation: traditional IT operations-centric automation, managing workloads across enterprise systems.
• IT Workflow Orchestration: workflow execution and management across IT and enterprise systems.
• Data Orchestration: managing data-centric workflows, from extraction to reporting.
• Citizen Automation: enabling non-IT users to create and execute workflows under IT governance.
• DevOps Automation: supporting DevOps practices by automating testing and delivery processes.