Microsoft recently released Microsoft Process Advisor to expand into process capture and analytics. This will help the company in expanding the reach of Microsoft Power Automate which is the company’s robotic process automation (RPA) and cloud integration platform.
These enhancements will help Microsoft’s Power Automate to expand beyond RPA into the overall hyperautomation industry, which Gartner estimates to increase from $481.6 billion in 2020 to $596 billion in 2022.
“The idea of ‘automating automation’ is core to our strategy,” said Microsoft Power Automate product manager Stephen Siciliano. “Process Advisor gives organizations the ability to capture processes for further analysis or as templates for creating more full-fledged automation” he added.
As part of its developer-oriented Build 2021 conference, Microsoft announced the general release of new process advisory capabilities that assist customers to identify processes best suited for automation from within Power Automate.
“Microsoft’s goal is to provide an automation platform that can be used by anyone — from business users up to IT developers and everyone in between. The team is focused on enabling deep integration with the entire Microsoft ecosystem,” said Siciliano.
Microsoft’s Power Automate Update
1. Automation governance, cloud focus:
With the recent announcement that Power Automate would be included in Windows 10, Microsoft has gained substantial traction, implying that over 1 billion devices now have access to automation programs. Integration of Power Automate into an on-premises gateway using Azure Relay to connect the inside of corporate networks to the cloud is another intriguing breakthrough.
Azure-originator Microsoft has concentrated on cloud RPA to deliver centralized management and management for these automations. When compared to older RPA systems, which compelled dedicated servers and deployments to handle, this reduces the overhead of deployment and management for businesses. Power Automate also supports over 475 connectors, allowing for a wide range of connections.
“When our customers have previous implementations with other RPA vendors, they generally don’t just translate their RPA as-is, sticking with desktop flows,” Siciliano said. “Instead, they usually take the opportunity to move to cloud flows when possible.”
2. Expanding beyond RPA
RPA has been one of the fastest-growing markets, it is rapidly advancing beyond tools for cutting and pasting data between applications utilizing screen scraping procedures to facilitate complicated and scalable workflows via APIs.
Microsoft said that it intends to keep the platform open so Enterprises can incorporate best-of-breed features from major RPA suppliers like UiPath, Blue Prism, and Automation Anywhere, as well as process mining suppliers like Fortress IQ and Celonis.
Although Microsoft is a newcomer to process automation, the company has boosted its efforts considerably with the acquisition of RPA specialist Softomotive last year.
