Microsoft announced its acquisition of Softomotive to enable citizen developers across its customer base. Rumors spilled into the public domain in recent weeks and we explored what this might mean in a recent blog post If Microsoft is buying Softomotive it’s not only beneficial to each party, but also the RPA market. Microsoft and Softomotive have shared their thinking with us as the announcement went public during its developers’ conference Microsoft Build 2020, this year, for obvious reasons, an entirely digital event.

Softomotive’s WinAutomation is available as a tool in Power Automate with immediate effect

Microsoft has made its move, searching the RPA market looking for a good fit. According to Microsoft, the value in this purchase is the Softomotive product technology itself, which was its highest priority consideration throughout the targeting process. Cloud-based and ease-of-use were called out as differentiating features, but what clinched it was the fact that it “just worked right out of the gate”.  Softomotive’s WinAutomation desktop automation product will be available to Power Automate users as part of the subscription price of $40 / month, the same price that Microsoft announced in April. WinAutomation is a tool within UI flows, meaning processes automated in WinAutomation can be launched from UI flows.

Other Softomotive assets will likely take longer to settle as they are further evaluated for fit within Microsoft’s broader product family. Microsoft is confident it has more tricks up its sleeve to amplify the groundwork already laid by Softomotive in its product development so far. Softomotive’s ProcessRobot governance capabilities will be absorbed if and as required into Microsoft’s existing governance capabilities. The future of Robin, Softomotive’s open-source RPA language is not yet decided, though it was encouragingly described by its new owners as well architected, with the professionalism of the engineering team showing through.

Co-Founder and CEO, Marios Stavropoulos, is happy for Softomotive to be acquired by the technology giant in pursuance of the two companies’ shared goal and a shared belief in the importance of providing an automation tool for users to create automated flows.  All Softomotive employees will transition to Microsoft in the move. Additional terms of the deal were not announced.

This will make some waves across the RPA ecosystem

The hype-filled RPA market showed some signs of suffering as 2019 drew to a close, most notably with UiPath’s layoffs. Since lockdowns took effect, various RPA technology firms have announced belt-tightening and pandemic endurance strategies, such as Automation Anywhere’s announcement of workforce reduction and organization realignment in anticipation of growth falling short of projections or Blue Prism’s “balance sheet strengthen round” of $120M.

We’ve been watching the enterprise software vendors gradually ease into the RPA space for some time. And we’ve been watching Microsoft’s advances over the past year, looking at Power Automate and its overall fit in Microsoft’s Power Platform, with another check-in as Power Automate launched into general availability.

The implications of a player of this size selling RPA, with the installed base the size of Microsoft’s, are potentially massive. Microsoft tells us that over 350,000 organizations use Power Automate every month.

The Bottom Line: This series of moves by Microsoft will increase awareness of RPA while also increasing its availability and accessibility, embedding it firmly into the common business vernacular.

Microsoft’s entry into RPA is simultaneously a threat of sorts to other RPA players and a boon to the industry. It presents an easy and accessible entry point to citizen developer automation and it provides a learning ground with centralized governance, with additional functionality in the WinAutomation tool, at a reasonable price point. For citizen developers who exhaust all those capabilities, it will whet their appetite for evaluating other automation options if additional functionality is required.