Not long ago, automation lived on-prem. Jobs were tightly coupled to physical servers, automation was often treated as a back-office utility and schedulers were sized to match static infrastructure. But IT environments don’t stand still anymore — and automation can’t either.
As teams shift toward hybrid and cloud technologies, workload automation (WLA) needs to evolve, too. Not because your current solution is broken, but because cloud-first tools are better equipped to support growth, change and resilience. The right strategy allows you to extend what you have on-premises while taking advantage of cloud-based solutions where they make sense.
Cloud-first doesn’t mean cloud-only
Some processes still belong on-prem, and many organizations will remain hybrid or multi-cloud for the long haul. That’s normal. Automation has to meet your business where it is, not force a complete replatforming.
Cloud-first means choosing SaaS-native automation tools when expanding capabilities or modernizing parts of your environment. It gives your teams the flexibility to automate across ERP, data platforms, DevOps and more, so you can integrate quickly and reduce manual maintenance.
The goal isn’t to rip and replace. It’s to simplify what’s complex and make your WLA platform future-ready.
Why workload automation works better in the cloud
Legacy systems were built for a different era. They do the job, but they require tuning, patching and on-prem support that doesn’t scale easily. As automation becomes more central to digital operations, these limits start to matter.
Cloud-first WLA removes the infrastructure burden and adapts to shifting demand without manual overhead.
Benefit
Value provided
Built-in elasticity 🤸
Adds dynamic, on-demand scaling to manage variable workloads automatically, reducing the need for manual resource forecasting and provisioning
Faster time-to-value 🚀
Provides immediate access to the latest features and innovations through continuous, automatic updates, eliminating planned upgrade cycles
Centralized control across hybrid systems 🎯
Extends your existing central control to seamlessly manage and monitor workflows across both on-premises and cloud-native environments from a single interface
Always-on reliability 🔒
Ensures business continuity with built-in, automated failover and disaster recovery, freeing your team to focus on strategic initiatives
Pay-as-you-grow economics 💸
Optimizes resource spending by providing a flexible, value-based model that eliminates the need for risky upfront capital investment
Easier integration 🔗
Accelerates the adoption of new technologies through a continuously expanding library of pre-built connectors, reducing development time and custom scripting
Support for modern use cases 💡
Unlocks new automation possibilities, such as event-driven workflows and real-time data pipelines, resulting in improved adaptability and streamlined business outcomes
Automation goals haven’t changed — the delivery model has
The reason to automate hasn’t changed: reduce errors, speed up processes and free up people for higher-value work. What’s changed is how quickly your automation platform needs to adapt to business needs.
A cloud-first approach helps you respond to business demands without waiting on infrastructure. New processes can be built and deployed faster. New systems can be connected in less time. And your teams can focus on building value, not maintaining tools.
You don’t lose control. You gain capacity.
It also reduces technical debt. Instead of holding on to legacy schedulers that require custom scripts and tribal knowledge, you get a system that evolves with you. One that enables better governance, compliance and transparency across IT and business operations.
Respecting the value of existing systems
If you’re already using a WLA solution on-prem, you’ve laid a strong foundation. You know the value of automation, the importance of visibility and the impact of reliable scheduling.
But if you’re finding it harder to scale, integrate or support new initiatives, it may be time to extend your automation with a cloud-first option. That means giving your team a platform that’s built for what’s next.
Many teams continue to use their on-prem automation alongside cloud-first orchestration. It’s not all or nothing. The benefit is having the freedom to move at your own pace, modernizing high-impact workflows first and expanding as needed.
RunMyJobs by Redwood: Cloud-native automation that grows with you
RunMyJobs is Redwood Software’s SaaS-native WLA platform. It’s built for hybrid and cloud environments from the start and used by enterprises worldwide to orchestrate complex workflows across SAP, DevOps, data platforms, finance and more.
What makes it different:
True cloud-native: No agents, no patching, no servers to manage
Built-in support for SAP: S/4HANA, RISE with SAP, IDoc monitoring and more
Integration-ready: Prebuilt connectors for cloud services, ERP, file transfer, containers and CI/CD pipelines
Always-on performance: High availability with global redundancy and 24/7 support
Transparent pricing: Usage-based licensing with no agent or job count restrictions
RunMyJobs is ideal for teams that want to reduce manual scheduling, eliminate job failures and improve SLA performance. It brings together business-critical workloads in one view, so you can monitor, control and scale without complexity.
Many Redwood customers use RunMyJobs alongside their existing automation tools. It allows them to modernize at their own pace, starting with the processes that benefit most from agility, visibility and scale.
Thinking about your next move?
If automation is a critical part of your business, your platform shouldn’t be a limiting factor. Cloud-first WLA gives you a way to move faster without taking on more infrastructure, risk or overhead. Use it to extend your automation strategy — not upend it.
Read more about Redwood’s unique approach to WLA migration and how our teams prepare you for a smooth transition from legacy to cloud.
Workload automation (WLA) has always been a backbone technology. It runs behind the scenes, connecting ERP, data pipelines, DevOps workflows and business processes, keeping jobs on track and business outcomes on schedule. But many organizations are still running legacy schedulers or WLA tools that have served them well but weren’t built with today’s scale, hybrid IT environments or cloud workloads in mind.
If your IT automation is running well but you’re finding it harder to scale or innovate, it may be the right moment to consider a jump in WLA technology. And modernization doesn’t have to mean all cloud, all at once; many teams keep key processes on-premises while adopting cloud-based orchestration where it adds value.
Here are nine signs that your organization is ready for a change and how doing so will prepare you for scalability and long-term resilience.
✅ Your team is ready to move beyond daily upkeep
On-premises WLA solutions can fall multiple versions behind because upgrades compete with other IT priorities. Adding hardware to expand capacity feels clunky, and even routine maintenance can put critical workflows at risk. When your IT team is spending more energy on patching and firefighting than planning new initiatives, it’s often a signal you’ve outgrown the old model. Upgrading to a SaaS-based platform is less about replacing what you have and more about celebrating that your automation maturity has reached a point where you’re ready for the next level.
✅ Manual fixes are crowding out higher-value work
If your operators are babysitting workflows or writing scripts just to keep processes running, you’re not realizing the full ROI of automation. Time is money, and when you spend hours on workarounds instead of optimizing processes, your total cost of ownership (TCO) rises and strategic value shrinks.
Modern WLA software reduces that manual intervention with event-based triggers, self-service options and automated recovery. Freeing your people from constant fixes means more time spent improving processes and less time chasing failures.
✅ Automation needs to follow workloads into the cloud
Most enterprises are already moving workloads to the cloud, whether it’s data analytics, ERP modules or customer-facing apps. If your WLA doesn’t connect to cloud platforms natively, you’re forced into brittle workarounds that waste time and limit scalability.
Modernization means orchestrating flawlessly across on-prem, hybrid and multi-cloud environments — AWS, Azure, Google Cloud and SaaS applications — with equal reliability. Modern WLA adapts dynamically to wherever the workload runs.
✅ Visibility gaps are slowing decisions
When leaders don’t have a real-time view of workflows, they’re forced to make decisions based on lagging reports or gut instinct. Outdated WLA tools often lack centralized dashboards or predictive analytics. That leaves IT blind to bottlenecks, failed jobs or SLA risks until it’s too late.
Modern platforms deliver observability with centralized dashboards, SLA projections and proactive alerts so you can fix issues before they disrupt the business.
✅ Scaling feels harder than it should
Every business faces periods where job volumes soar: end-of-month closings, holiday traffic, product launches. Traditional WLA models can hit limits under pressure, leading to delays and downtime. Some organizations work around this by adding servers and hardware that they only need a few times a year.
A modern SaaS platforms scales with your business, growing and shrinking with demand, so you only pay for the value you get. That means no scrambling or overbuying.
✅ Maintenance is draining resources
Traditional job scheduling tools can come with hidden costs in the form of specialized staff or consultants and downtime during upgrades. None of that creates business value.
In contrast, a SaaS-based automation platform rolls out updates automatically to minimize downtime and ensure you don’t have to rely on niche expertise. You get true financial headroom, even beyond IT operations.
✅ Security expectations have surpassed your tools
When automation runs financials, healthcare data, customer transactions and other key processes that handle sensitive data, security isn’t optional. Many systems still in use struggle to keep pace with modern cybersecurity expectations.
Today’s automation platforms include role-based access control (RBAC), encryption, continuous patching and audit-ready trails by default. So instead of hoping your system is secure, you can prove it.
✅ AI isn’t part of the equation
If your platform is stuck in reactive mode, you’re missing opportunities to get ahead of issues and continuously improve. Automation isn’t static anymore — it’s intelligent. AI isn’t hype in this space. It’s becoming the standard for enterprises that want reliable, efficient and proactive automation.
The most advanced WLA platforms now layer in AI and machine learning. These capabilities don’t just predict job failures but also recommend optimizations and analyze patterns across thousands of runs. It’s the difference between automation that simply works and automation that amplifies ROI by proactively driving efficiency.
✅ Users want more control without more risk
When automation tools are too complex, IT becomes the bottleneck. Business users resort to shadow IT, running critical business processes outside governance because the official system is too hard to use.
Modern WLA turns this on its head with intuitive interfaces, drag-and-drop workflow builders and delegated self-service. When users are empowered, automation becomes a force multiplier instead of a source of friction.
Why readiness matters now — no matter your use case
Every organization is under pressure to do more with less. Outdated workload automation slows you down, increases risk and adds hidden costs. Modernization isn’t about chasing a trend; it’s about putting your business in a position to scale, innovate and compete.
A modern SaaS WLA solution gives you:
Scalability without infrastructure sprawl
Deep integrations not only with SAP and other enterprise systems, but also for hybrid and multi-cloud workloads
Observability for centralized visibility and predictive monitoring
AI-driven optimization and self-service
Built-in security and control
Lower cost of ownership and fewer upgrade headaches
If these signs sound familiar, it may be because your business success has outgrown traditional approaches. That’s a good thing — it means you’re ready to modernize. Acting now lets you turn that momentum into a more scalable, flexible and resilient automation strategy, just as many leading enterprises are already doing.
With RunMyJobs by Redwood, we offer the only SaaS-native WLA platform purpose-built for hybrid IT, designed to support SAP and business-critical processes at scale. Because we’ve led in both on-prem and SaaS, we’re uniquely positioned to guide your transition and help you modernize at your own pace.
Talk with a Redwood expert to see how a modern workload automation solution can reduce costs, boost operational efficiency and support your cloud journey.
More than half of the typical month-end close depends on journal entries. But for most finance and accounting teams, “automation” still means entering numbers into Excel templates, attaching supporting documents and emailing approvals because manual work is hidden behind a polished user interface.
It doesn’t have to be this way though. Finance Automation by Redwood eliminates manual journal entries entirely. It integrates with your ERP systems, orchestrates every step in the journal entry process and removes human intervention from data sourcing, transformation, validation and posting.
For example, Forvia is a global automotive supplier operating in more than 40 countries, and this organization uses the platform to automate over 80% of its monthly journal entries. In turn, Forvia reduces risk, saves time and accelerates its financial close. But that level of control and consistency is only possible when automation starts at the source, not after the work is already done.
The root issue: Manual work is still baked into journal entries
Some financial close or point solutions focus on the end result, like validating journal entries, routing for approval and posting to the ERP, but overlook the labor-intensive steps that come before it. Accounting and finance teams still run reports, collect feedback and shape financial data in spreadsheets, even when using journal entry automation software. That’s not automation. It’s reformatting manual labor.
Manual work repackaged in spreadsheets
Even with modern tools, manual journal entries persist. Finance and accounting teams use prefilled templates to enter data. They send approval requests through email. They track accruals, allocations and intercompany transactions in separate spreadsheets. Each task happens outside the main system. This slows down the financial reporting and accounting processes and makes it harder to catch mistakes. The workflow lacks speed, accuracy and real-time oversight.
Finance Automation eliminates these handoffs. It sources data directly from ERP, procurement and other systems, applies rules automatically and generates audit-ready journal entries without copy-and-paste work or manual review.
Where automation falls short
Take the open purchase order (PO) accrual process, for example. Most financial close or point solutions automate the final three steps:
Review and group
Create journal entries
Post journal entries
But the first four steps — the ones that are the most time-consuming — remain manual:
Run the open PO report
Group by requester
Email each requester
Capture feedback
These tasks demand manual data entry, offline collaboration and ad hoc spreadsheets. That’s where human error, bottlenecks and discrepancies build up, and it’s also where Finance Automation applies full orchestration, not just automation.
Why fragmented tools don’t solve the problem
Those financial close and point solutions tend to automate in silos by focusing on a few repetitive tasks but missing the full picture. This creates more work, not less.
Manual data entry: A hidden time drain
Even with accounting software, teams copy data from multiple systems into templates. Each adjustment introduces risk and adds hours to the close.
Siloed tools: Islands of automation
Bolt-on or partial solutions don’t connect across systems. Teams must step in and do the work by hand. They reconcile large volumes of financial records one by one. They also handle approval steps across disconnected systems. This makes the process slow and disorganized. Each manual task increases the chance of a delay or mistake.
Limited control: No end-to-end visibility
Teams can’t see the entire workflow from start to finish. They also can’t track postings as they happen, nor can they confirm that policies are followed. Real-time dashboards are not possible without a full system connection. There’s no system-wide view of exceptions, delays or statuses.
The better approach: True automation from start to finish
Finance Automation is an end-to-end finance automation solution built for the full record-to-report (R2R) cycle. It removes manual steps entirely and connects people, data and systems into one orchestrated flow.
What gets automated:
Data extraction from ERP, procurement and CRM systems
Calculations and transformation of raw inputs into structured journal entries
Validation and approvals through system-managed workflows instead of emails
Posting of journal entries in real time to the general ledger
Archiving and audit trails for compliance and transparency
Whether it’s recurring automatic journal entries, intercompany adjustments or high-volume allocations, every journal entry follows a repeatable, controlled process with no offline handoffs or shadow systems.
What finance and account teams gain in return
By eliminating the burden of manual intervention, teams can redirect their time toward financial planning, forecasting and insight-driven decision-making.
With Finance Automation, your organization can save valuable time by:
Automating journal entries across entities, business units and functions
Cutting days off the financial close
Increasing speed and consistency with real-time processing and visibility
Reducing risk with built-in internal controls and validation
Replacing email loops with system-driven approval workflows
True automation doesn’t start with a spreadsheet
If your team is still relying on manual processes, like journal entry creation and approval routing, you’re not truly automating. You’re just working harder to do the same work.
Finance Automation transforms that model. It streamlines and optimizes the entire process, enforces consistency and removes the unseen burden behind the scenes.
AI’s not new. It’s just urgent now. Every roadmap, every board update — it’s in there. Leadership wants results, yesterday. So teams scramble, launching an AI assistant here, a predictive model there. Tack on a chatbot. Maybe a workflow or two. But the minute someone asks, “Is this actually working?” it all gets quiet.
That’s because most systems and teams just aren’t built for AI yet. The hype is running ahead of the architecture. According to Redwood Software’s “Enterprise automation index 2025,” nearly 40% of organizations admit they’re not ready to adopt or implement AI-driven automation.
This isn’t about getting access to a model. It’s not even about building one. Readiness is the boring stuff under the hood: data quality, process consistency, orchestration, exception handling. That’s what makes AI useful (or useless).
Redwood’s data shows that fewer than 6% of companies have reached autonomous automation in any major business process. Most are still crawling, even in high-stakes areas like quote-to-cash. So when an AI tool misfires — maybe it reorders the wrong part, flags a non-issue or misroutes a service ticket — the real problem isn’t the AI. It’s everything feeding into it.
You invested in automation, but did you stabilize it?
More than 73% of companies say they increased automation spending last year. Only 36.6% feel ready to apply AI. That should tell you something. A lot of teams bought the tools, but the groundwork isn’t there.
If your workflows are still rule-based and brittle, your exception handling is half-human, half-spreadsheet and your APIs are duct-taped together from three systems ago, using AI won’t solve that. It’ll just scale the mess instead. This is what stalls pilots: not bad models — broken environments.
About your workflows…
You’ve got platforms everywhere. CRM, ERP, maybe a ticketing system for customer support or field service. They work (sort of), but they’re not exactly talking to each other.
You’ve got automation, but it’s scattered across tools. And it’s hard to know what’s actually happening when something goes wrong. Now imagine dropping AI into that mix and asking it to make decisions, in real time and with real impact.
We’ve seen this movie. The pilot works, and the chatbot answers a few questions. The predictive model makes a recommendation. But there’s no feedback loop, no clean handoff, no way to measure if the output actually helped. So the pilot ends, and nobody wants to own it anymore.
Here’s what you’re skipping — and shouldn’t
Most AI efforts start with the use case.
Let’s automate onboarding
Let’s forecast demand
Let’s personalize support
Fine goals. But what about:
Who owns the outcome when AI makes a choice?
Can you see — and explain — how it got to that choice?
What happens when something breaks at 3 AM?
Can the system ask for help? Does it even know it needs to?
Governance. Data orchestration. Exception flows. Alignment with actual business outcomes.
These are boring, but when you skip them, you end up with a demo, not a system.
What the mature teams are doing
They’re not chasing shiny tools; they’re tuning the engine. Here’s what we see from the AI-ready crowd:
Clean, version-controlled datasets that support real-time decision-making
Clear governance rules that define what AI can (and can’t) do
Exception handling that doesn’t depend on someone checking their inbox
Redwood customers who follow this approach are:
2x as likely to cut manual workloads by 50%
1.6x as likely to improve operational efficiency
More likely to reduce costs by over 50%
These teams aren’t more enthusiastic about AI-powered solutions. They’re just more prepared.
Are you actually ready for AI?
It’s a fair question. Before you deploy another chatbot or predictive model, take a hard look at what’s underneath:
Are your business processes clearly mapped and automated?
Can your systems handle complex tasks — or just repetitive ones?
Are your AI models getting data they can actually trust?
Do your outputs link back to measurable outcomes?
AI won’t magically fix disorganized operations. But it will accelerate what’s already there — good or bad. If you haven’t mapped your exceptions, validated your inputs or built real-time visibility across systems, you’re not ready yet. And that’s okay. That’s fixable.
But don’t plug in AI and expect it to clean things up. Clean first, then scale. Want to know how your automation foundation stacks up? Download the full report and benchmark your AI readiness.
The Service Orchestration and Automation Platform (SOAP) market has expanded fast. In parallel with that growth, vendors have been vying for Leader positions in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SOAP since 2024. But with feature lists that sound nearly identical, it can be hard to tell which solutions truly enable end-to-end orchestration across complex enterprise environments.
One way to tell is to look at integration. The best SOAPs aren’t just job schedulers with APIs. They truly connect every system and application you need, below the surface.
“SOAPs empower infrastructure and operations (I&O) leaders to streamline and accelerate the delivery of business services. These platforms integrate workflow orchestration, workload automation and resource provisioning across an organization’s hybrid IT landscape.”
According to Gartner, two of the mandatory features for a SOAP speak directly to extensibility:
Management of workflows spanning the operating environment: This includes request management, integration between IT software platforms and end-user enablement, data pipelines, citizen developer enablement and DevOps pipeline integration.
Broad integration capabilities: This includes the ability to integrate with and incorporate software and infrastructure technology landscapes that span from the cloud to enterprise applications.
If integration is limited, orchestration is limited — and so is your business.
Beyond features: What can a SOAP connect?
In hybrid enterprises, orchestration must cover the entire IT landscape, from on-premises systems and private and public cloud applications to team collaboration. Gartner analysts’ focus has evolved accordingly. They don’t just score platforms on job throughput or UI polish, but on their ability to:
Span hybrid infrastructure
Enable real-time event triggers
Extend orchestration to non-technical users
That shift mirrors what I’ve seen in the field. Over the years, I’ve worked with organizations that started with a basic scheduler and quickly hit a wall. When a new SaaS tool or cloud platform entered the mix, the scheduler couldn’t keep up. It usually had no connectors, no agentless support — no way to adapt without workarounds. So, it wasn’t truly extensible.
I see extensibility as the real test of future-readiness and a core marker of the long-term value of your investment in a SOAP. Deep integration capabilities aren’t just nice to have. A SOAP’s ability to integrate with new systems quickly impacts how fast your team can innovate.
Signs your automation platform isn’t built for extensibility
These red flags often point to poor integration maturity:
⚠️ Connector sprawl and/or a lack of mission-critical integrations
⚠️ Inflexible APIs and poorly documented endpoints
⚠️ No support for event-based triggers
⚠️ Custom integrations that are hard to maintain
⚠️ Manual upgrade paths for plugins and connectors
3 dimensions of integration readiness
Think of integration as a multi-layer capability, not as a yes/no checkbox. A mature SOAP handles three levels of integration. When all three are supported, you gain the flexibility to scale orchestration across teams and technologies without constant rewrites or custom workarounds.
Infrastructure
At the infrastructure level, a mature SOAP platform should connect flawlessly to both modern and legacy systems without relying on fragile, agent-based setups. It must support a variety of hybrid environments, including virtual machines (VMs), containers, on-premises systems and multi-cloud deployments. It should also offer centralized orchestration that doesn’t compromise on control or security. This level lays the technical foundation for stability and reach.
Application and service
At the application and service level, extensibility means being able to orchestrate workflows across critical business platforms: ERP, CRM, ETL, analytics, ITSM, iPaaS, MFT and more. Integration, in this way, goes beyond surface-level connectivity. The strongest platforms offer certified or pre-built connectors that are actively maintained, scalable and designed to handle the nuances of enterprise-grade data and complex processes.
Developer
Finally, at the developer level, extensibility should empower both IT teams and business technologists. That means it provides rich APIs, SDKs, scripting support and webhook capabilities for creating programmable workflows that interact with modern CI/CD toolchains. It also means allowing teams to compose automations using templates, scripts and event-based triggers, without being boxed into rigid frameworks. This layer ensures that orchestration can adapt and evolve as teams innovate.
What extensibility looks like in practice
A SOAP with mature extensibility will contribute to outcomes across many functions of your business.
Connectivity and integrations: Expand with a library of pre-built connectors while empowering users to create their own integrations with intuitive, low-code tools.
Custom application development: Support scripting languages and integrate with modern development environments, enabling developers to build custom automation and applications on top of the platform.
API and data integrations: Provide robust inbound and outbound APIs for custom interactions and seamless data exchange with third-party systems, such as observability platforms.
Event-driven architecture: Power real-time, dynamic automation with a flexible architecture that triggers workflows based on events across the hybrid enterprise.
5 questions that reveal SOAP extensibility
Cut through the marketing gloss and expose the platform’s integration maturity.
What systems are supported out of the box?
How are new connectors delivered and updated?
Can we create our own reusable templates and workflows?
How do you support real-time orchestration triggers?
What CI/CD and iPaaS integrations are available?
The trap: Automation tools that don’t scale
Many automation tools start strong with slick UIs, low-code builders or decent job scheduling, but then a new system is introduced, a use case shifts or a citizen developer needs access. And suddenly, you’re blocked with no connector — thus, no agility.
The most telling sign of SOAP maturity isn’t what the platform can do out of the box, but how well it adapts when your tech landscape changes.
SOAP Leaders stand out
The best SOAP isn’t the one with the longest feature list; it’s the one that plays well with others. I believe the Leaders recognized in the 2025 Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for SOAP report demonstrate:
Broad integration with cloud-native and enterprise systems
Rich APIs and partner ecosystems
Support for diverse roles, from DevOps to business users
Proven hybrid-readiness and extensibility
Gartner research continues to show that extensibility separates platforms that automate from those that truly orchestrate. The SOAP that will best serve your enterprise will be the one that grows with your tech stack, your users and your business.
Redwood Software’s SOAP solution, RunMyJobs, is built for deep, future-ready integration with SaaS-native, agentless delivery and a growing connector library. It’s also the only workload automation solution that’s an SAP Endorsed App, Premium certified, which indicates deep integration with SAP systems, apps and technologies.
Make integration your organization’s superpower. Download the full analyst report to see why Redwood was named a Leader two years in a row.
Gartner® publishes two complementary reports on Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms (SOAPs): the Magic Quadrant™ for SOAP and the Critical Capabilities for SOAP. The Magic Quadrant™ evaluates vendors at the organizational level, scoring their Ability to Execute and Completeness of Vision. In my view, the companion Critical Capabilities report takes the analysis deeper, focusing on the features and capabilities of the products themselves and mapping them to five key Use Cases.
Together, the two reports give a comprehensive view of the SOAP market landscape, but they remain market-level research, not an assessment of your specific business priorities.
Here, we offer a practical framework for how to translate Gartner’s approach into your own scorecard to evaluate SOAP platforms against your organization’s needs and goals.
Why capability-based evaluation matters
The Magic Quadrant™ is invaluable for seeing which vendors are positioned strongly in the market. It shows who’s executing effectively today and who has the vision and roadmap to meet tomorrow’s demands. But it’s not a detailed interrogation of product features or a guarantee of fit for your particular requirements.
That’s why the Gartner Critical Capabilities companion report is so useful. It zooms in on differentiators — why the SOAP software providers were recognized in particular areas. It asks: How well does this platform execute real-world tasks? How usable is it? What outcomes does it enable?
In the report, Gartner recommends, “When selecting a SOAP vendor, conduct thorough due diligence to understand their specific strengths in innovation, integration and responsiveness to emerging trends, rather than assuming parity in a mature market.”
Inspired by this approach, we’ve built a scorecard you can use to evaluate vendors for your particular purposes, for both functionality and fit, based on the five SOAP Use Cases.
Key capability domains to score
Each domain aligns with a Use Case from the Gartner report. Below, you’ll find:
What the domain measures
Traits to look for
A 1–5 scoring rubric
Operational resilience and IT workload execution
Inspired by the IT Workload Automation Use Case
Can the platform orchestrate and safeguard large volumes of complex, time-sensitive IT workloads?
What to evaluate:
SLA monitoring and escalation dashboards
Automated failover, retry and recovery mechanisms
Volume throughput and performance under stress
System auditability and job history tracking
How to score:
1
Minimal support; manual monitoring and recovery; no remote job monitoring; unreliable performance
2
Basic monitoring dashboards; manual recovery with some remote job monitoring
3
Real-time monitoring tools and alerts; basic recovery options; moderate reliability
4
SLA monitoring aligned with business requirements; intelligent recovery based on thresholds; strong dependency and decision-making features
5
Full observability features for monitoring and problem management with system and job performance; automated rollback/recovery; extensive dependency management and resilient job execution; high SLA integrity
Hybrid orchestration and workflow flexibility
Inspired by the IT Workflow Orchestration Use Case
How well does the platform support both business and technical workflows across hybrid environments (on-prem, multi- cloud, SaaS)?
What to evaluate:
Breadth of pre-built integrations across legacy and modern systems
Ease of orchestration across teams and technologies (e.g., low-code)
Flexibility to design, trigger and adapt complex workflows
Support for both technical and non-technical users
How to score:
1
Limited integrations; code-heavy; inflexible for cross-system workflows
2
Some inflexible connectors and code-heavy for customization; no low-code; moderate flexibility
3
Manual install for connectors; no library; limited reusability
4
Moderate connector library; community-supported connectors; some low-code options
5
Broad integration library; powerful no-code connector customization and reusable templates; non-technical user support
Data movement and pipeline governance
Inspired by the Data Orchestration Use Case
Can the platform reliably orchestrate large-scale, rule-based data flows across warehouses, lakes and BI systems?
What to evaluate:
Availability of connectors for major data platforms (e.g., Snowflake, SAP Datasphere)
Orchestration of rule-based, event-driven data flows
SLA tracking for data jobs and throughput performance
Guardrails like validations, retries and logging
How to score:
1
Integrated with legacy data management solutions and databases; manual or scripted data transfers; low throughput; poor visibility
2
Core data management with very limited third-party integrations; some file management capabilities
3
Basic data management integrations; minimal guardrails; requires customization for downstream and upstream dependency management
4
Data pipeline (SaaS, iPaaS and MF) integrations; downstream dependency management and upstream management for reporting and analytics
5
High throughput; supports dynamic event-based orchestration; data governance; proactive SLA monitoring
Can non-technical users safely create, edit and trigger automations with the right controls?
What to evaluate:
Guided self-service tools for workflow design and execution
Guardrails and governance features (e.g., approval workflows, role-based access)
Training resources and onboarding ease
Audit logs and rollback capabilities for business-created workflows
How to score:
1
Designed only for developers/IT; no guardrails
2
Business users can get scheduled reports via email for the success or failure of reports
3
Business users can consume information in the UI about workflows but cannot influence them
4
Basic human-in-the-loop capabilities — business users can input simply into workflows to manage certain stages; some support for forms or reports in the UI
5
Full customization of user experience, dashboards, forms and interfaces for visibility and management of workflows, safety checks and governance policies
DevOps readiness and automation agility
Inspired by the DevOps Automation Use Case
Does the platform integrate with DevOps toolchains and support agile release cycles?
What to evaluate:
Native plugin availability for CI/CD tools
API maturity and extensibility
Support for version control, branching, rollback and parallel pipeline execution
Ability to deploy and manage automation as code
How to score:
1
No DevOps or versioning; manual management of versioning; no way to move workflows between environments or systems for promotion of new workflows and other objects
2
Disconnected environments provide automation developers with ways to manage change, manual export and import
3
Basic support for versioning and change management between environments; rigid and inflexible promotion and versioning
4
Integrated versioning and promotion of new workflows between environments; simple integrations with DevOps ecosystems
5
Comprehensive DevOps ecosystem integrations to automate and deploy new workflows from CI/CD pipeline management tools; low-code options to integrate with new environments; extensive in-product version and deployment control
Constructing your SOAP scorecard
You don’t need a complex spreadsheet to evaluate SOAPs. Just build a simple table:
Capability domain
Score (1-5)
Weight (%)
Weighted score
IT workload execution
4
25
1.0
Workflow flexibility
5
20
1.0
Data orchestration
3
20
0.6
Citizen automation
4
15
0.6
DevOps readiness
2
20
0.4
3.6
Adjust weights based on your priorities. If you’re focused on business agility, you might weigh citizen automation more heavily. If uptime is paramount, prioritize IT workload execution.
This approach doesn’t just tell you which provider offers what you want but the depth to which that capability goes.
Interpreting your results
4.5-5.0: Top-tier platform fit, capabilities with depth
3.5-4.4: Strong candidate, likely meets core needs with some tradeoffs
2.5-3.4: Mid-tier and may require customization or compromise
<2.5: Unlikely to meet enterprise orchestration needs
Practical evaluation prompts
Use these conversation starters with vendors to dig into real-world capabilities.
“Show me how a business user can edit this workflow safely.”
“How many systems can I orchestrate without writing custom code?”
“What happens if a data transfer job fails at 2 AM?”
“Can this platform trigger deployments based on real-time events?”
“How does the SLA dashboard escalate delays or job failures?”
Where Redwood leads — and what that signals for you
Redwood Software ranked #1 in all five Use Cases in the 2025 Gartner Critical Capabilities for SOAP report. We believe that reflects more than just functional breadth and confirms Redwood’s ability to deliver real-world orchestration across IT workloads, business workflows, citizen development, data movement and DevOps. This aligns with our mission to unleash human potential through automation fabric solutions.
