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What is a Service Orchestration and Automation Platform (SOAP)? Isn’t this just another name for workload automation?

Not quite. According to Gartner, the term service orchestration and automation platform (SOAP) describes workload automation designed for event-driven business models and cloud infrastructure.

The idea is that infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders will drive customer-focused agility by using these platforms as part of their cloud, big data and DevOps initiatives.

Gartner forecasts that 80% of organizations using automation tools will switch to SOAPs between now and 2024.

So what is a SOAP, exactly?

This type of automation platform provides a mix of workflow orchestration and resource provisioning across an organization’s hybrid technology infrastructure. SOAPs can adapt to cloud-native infrastructure and application architecture, unlike legacy job scheduling and workload automation tools.

These capabilities integrate with DevOps toolchains to provide better agility, so businesses can quickly develop automation that directly improves customer outcomes and experiences.

How do SOAPs help digital organizations?

In its “Market Guide for Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms”, Gartner says many of today’s automation tools fail to meet the needs of IT environments that include cloud-native infrastructure and big data workloads.

SOAPs, on the other hand, automate workflows that span diverse application and infrastructure domains, including cloud and big data. This minimizes complexity and increases speed and agility by enabling a single platform to manage all business processes, as opposed to relying on a mix of separate tools.

They also enable multiple teams, including some outside of IT, to take advantage of real-time, event-driven orchestration of business services. This capability is increasingly essential for businesses to respond quickly and decisively to customer needs. Event-driven orchestration runs processes the instant they are needed instead of waiting for a pre-scheduled time, and delivers better service and experience for customers.

SOAPs support business agility and digital innovation, while driving cost savings, operational efficiency and process standardization.

This all sounds great – how can I get these capabilities?

Redwood’s RunMyJobs® is a SOAP: it delivers workload automation capabilities for event-driven, hybrid-cloud multi-application IT environments, and has from the beginning.

RunMyJobs is SaaS-based software that provides cloud-native workflow orchestration and process automation with a system- and host-independent design. This means it directly supports applications whether they are running on-premises or hosted in the cloud.

RunMyJobs also supports the needs of event-driven business models. With RunMyJobs, processes can respond immediately when the correct data is received or the right set of conditions are met, or run following highly-flexible schedules.

How important is it to adopt a SOAP?

Implementing a SOAP like RunMyJobs will help you overcome the operational challenges you face as you move more applications and workloads to the cloud and develop the event-driven and customer-focused business models needed to compete.

And with RunMyJobs’ SaaS delivery, you’ll have the reliability and scalability you need, without the maintenance effort and cost. Adopting a SOAP will be a crucial component on your journey to becoming a truly digital business.

Find out how RunMyJobs meets the needs of digital businesses now and in the future here.

About The Author

Darrell Maronde's Avatar

Darrell Maronde

Darrell Maronde is the Senior Product Marketing Manager for Redwood’s workload automation solutions. He has more than 15 years of product marketing experience with on-prem and SaaS software, including solutions for IT and operations.