Technology giant Microsoft recently announced that it has acquired robotic process automation startup, Softomotive for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition was confirmed by Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella during his Build keynote.
Nadella informed that Softomotive would become a part of Microsoft’s Power Automate platform (PRA). “We’re bringing RPA — or robotic process automation to legacy apps and services with our acquisition of Softomotive,” said the CEO.
As part of the transaction, Microsoft will use Softomotive’s tools to enable a number of new capabilities, including Softomotives low-code desktop automation solution WinAutomation. Until now, Power Automate did not feature any desktop automation tools.
Softomotive is a world leader in providing robotic process automation (RPA) with over 15 years of experience. Softomotive is also the creator of WinAutomation. Microsoft is planning to democratize RPA and enable everyone to create bots to automate manual business processes.
Softomotive currently has about 9,000 customers around the world. Softomotive’s WinAutomation platform will be freely available to Power Automate users with what Microsoft calls an RPA attended license in Power Automate.
It’ll also build Softomotive’s connectors for applications from SAP, as well as legacy terminal screens and Java, into its desktop automation experience and enable parallel execution and multitasking for UI automation.
“One of our most distinguishing characteristics, and an indelible part of our DNA, is an unswerving commitment to usability,” writes Softomotive CEO and co-founder Marios Stavropoulos.
“We have always believed in the notion of citizen developers and, since less than two percent of the world population can write code, we believe the greatest potential for both process improvement and overall innovation comes from business end-users. This is why we have invested so diligently in abstracting complexity away from end-users and created one of the industry’s most intuitive user interfaces – so that non-technical business end-users can not just do more, but also make deeper contributions by becoming professional problem solvers and innovators. We are extremely excited to pursue this vision as part of Microsoft.”
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