Unlock business value with a composable BOAT solution
Take ownership of your technology stack and put the future of the business into your own hands
What is BOAT?
Gartner defines Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (BOAT) as a market that converges the capabilities organizations need to automate and orchestrate work end to end — across people, systems, AI agents, and automation endpoints — in a single, composable architecture.
Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (BOAT) combine business process orchestration, connectivity, and AI to coordinate end-to-end enterprise processes from start to finish.
The business-driven demand for automation
The digital transformation of businesses across industries has driven the demand for increasingly automated business processes — but the core processes that build and sell an organization's products and services are often complex and require high availability and extreme resilience.
The benefits of BOAT
Orchestrates business processes from start to finish across all tasks and automation endpoints, improving visibility and enabling continuous improvement
Brings together fragmented automations in a single process flow, reducing operational overhead and making it possible to improve business processes
Blends orchestration, connectivity, and AI to give organizations a future-proofed automation architecture that can evolve to serve changing business needs
Consolidates data and process insights across systems, providing AI tools with the unified metadata they need to power smarter, more autonomous processes
BOAT is a strategy, not a platform
While automation capabilities have been converging across tools for some time, a single software platform is rarely the right choice for every use case in an organization. Rather, automation composability is critical for BOAT success.
Process orchestration lies at the heart of BOAT
A composable approach to process orchestration delivers the benefits of BOAT without locking you into a single software platform or automation strategy.
Learn how consolidating automation technology is driving the emerging BOAT market — and enhancing automation maturity.
BOAT Guide for Automation LeadersAutomation driven by the business must involve the business
Collaboration between software developers, low-code developers, and business users is critical to ensure the right things are built and rolled out to your customers.
What is BPMN? →
Operationalize AI with the right BOAT solution
Wave after wave of AI innovation requires organizational leaders to rethink their operating model and their approach to process automation.
What is agentic orchestration? →Your BOAT checklist
As you consider adopting a BOAT solution, look for these qualities:
A composable approach that allows you to combine a variety of automation tools instead of locking you into a monolithic, black-box platform
An open architecture that ensures the solution will fit into your technology stack and work with software development and DevOps tooling and practices
Rich collaboration features that help IT teams and business stakeholders align on process design and work together to manage, analyze, and optimize processes
Gartner
Visionary
2025 Magic Quadrant™ for Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies
Analyst Recognition
Named a Visionary in the first-ever Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for BOAT
Gartner introduced the Magic Quadrant for Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies in 2025 — the first analyst framework to formally recognize BOAT as a distinct enterprise software category.