While Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Softomotive, which is a top RPA (Robotic Process Automation) vendor. This technology allows for the automation of repetitive and tedious processes, such as with legacy IT systems.

Microsoft had recently launched a new version of its own platform, called Power Automate, and also led a venture round in an AI-based RPA company, FortressIQ .

Softomotive will integrate with Microsoft's existing robotic process automation service, Power Automate. The company’s desktop automation solutions will join together with Microsoft’s Power Automate (formerly Microsoft Flow) capabilities at “uniquely affordable pricing. Microsoft is further democratizing RPA and enabling everyone to create bots to automate manual business processes.

The possibilities that this acquisition opens for our customers, including:

* Delivering a comprehensive low-code desktop automation solution with WinAutomation – We are providing customers with additional choices for creating workflows in Power Automate. Now, anyone can build RPA bots with our existing browser-based authoring app or through a new desktop app with WinAutomation.

* Expanding the out-of-the-box UI automation drivers for commonly used apps and services – Microsoft is committed to providing the most robust set of RPA capabilities in one platform, and is now expanding the existing desktop automation experience with the addition of Softomotive’s robust set of connectors and applications, such as SAP, legacy terminal screens, Java, Citrix, and more.

* Enabling parallel execution and multitasking – Customers can now execute multiple workflows and automations in parallel and on the same machine to reduce latency and improve the efficiency of their bots. This brings the same incredible scale from existing Power Automate API automation to UI automation.

* Offering thousands of additional features – We are bringing even more innovation from Softomotive built over the last 15 years to our customers to support low-code bot development.

Quickly create new processes with WinAutomation’s easy to use Desktop interface.

Today, over 350,000 organizations use Microsoft Power Automate every month to improve their productivity with advanced features like AI-based data understanding through AI Builder, UI-based application automation through UI flows, and integrating with applications and databases via 315 built-in API connectors. The comprehensive Power Automate platform represents the next generation of RPA and is accessible to everyone in an organization, including coders and non-coders alike, through a low-code development environment.

About Softomotive: Founded in 2005, the company was one of the pioneers of the RPA industry. It initially focused on developing a visual scripting system, using VBScript, for desktop automation. Softomotive would then go on to evolve the platform, such as by creating ProcessRobot for larger enterprises.

About FortressIQ: it is the leading computer-vision based process discovery platform. We combine computer vision, natural language processing (NLP), artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) to automatically discover, map, model and document all processes and sub-tasks executed across the enterprise by an organization’s workforce.

With the acquisition of Softomotive, a world-leading provider of robotic process automation (RPA) with over 15 years of experience and the creator of WinAutomation. By bringing Softomotive’s desktop automation together with the existing Microsoft Power Automate capabilities, at uniquely affordable pricing, Microsoft is further democratizing RPA and enabling everyone to create bots to automate manual business processes.

As of now, there are over 9,000 customers across the globe. Interestingly enough, Microsoft will make the Softomotive’s WinAutomation application free for those who have an attended licence for Power Automate.