Why it matters
Disconnected processes create friction, risk, and inefficiency. Even the most advanced organizations struggle to align workflows across legacy and cloud systems. Without orchestration, digital transformation cannot scale.
Systems don’t naturally “talk” to each other, leaving employees to fill the gaps with manual work.
Manual interventions slow operations, increase error rates, and introduce compliance risks.
Customers feel the pain when onboarding, support, or fulfillment processes break down.
Scaling requires standardized, automated workflows that can be trusted across departments and geographies.
In most organizations, processes span dozens of systems, departments, and external partners — yet they rarely flow seamlessly. Manual handoffs, duplicate data entry, and fragmented oversight lead to errors and rising costs. By combining workflow automation and orchestration technologies, we can eliminates silos, align governance, and ensure that processes run smoothly end-to-end. The result is a business that operates faster, more consistently, and with far greater efficiency.
The 4 Pillars of Business Orchestration
Enterprises need a foundation built on four complementary pillars: Experience, Orchestration, Connectivity, and Intelligence. Together, these capabilities ensure that automation is user-centric, processes are governed end-to-end, systems are seamlessly connected, and intelligence drives adaptability and continuous optimization
User Experience
The user-facing layer that delivers applications, portals, dashboards, and interfaces where people interact with processes. Ensures automation is accessible, intuitive, and value-generating for business users and customers.
Example Technologies: Mendix and Joget (Low-Code Application Platforms) deliver these user-facing applications that connect people into orchestrated processes
Process Orchestration
The coordination of processes, workflows, and decision logic across systems and people. Ensures that automation flows are consistent, reliable, and governable across the enterprise.
Example Technologies: Camunda provides deep workflow and decision automation; Symphonica adds domain-specific orchestration for OSS/BSS in telecom and large enterprises.
The integration backbone that moves data across systems, partners, and applications. Ensures the ecosystem is interoperable, scalable, and real-time, avoiding silos.
Example Technologies: Lobster Data acts as the integration platform, supporting EDI, APIs, files, and cloud-to-cloud connections.
Connectivity
Intelligence
The analytical and AI-driven capabilities that fuel smarter, adaptive automation. Ensures the platform is not just reactive, but predictive and adaptive, optimizing processes continuously.
Example Technologies: Mendix (AI-assisted low-code design, embedded intelligence)
Core Building Blocks
Effective business orchestration relies on a complementary set of capabilities: low-code application layers that deliver user interaction, workflow and decision orchestration to run processes reliably, integration backbones to connect data and systems, and industry-specific orchestration for domains like telecom OSS/BSS. Together, these elements create a scalable, connected, and intelligent automation ecosystem.
Creating Solutions
Orchestrate & Automate unifies processes across technology and people. It combines workflow engines, integration platforms, and industry-specific orchestrators to deliver seamless operations.
Camunda
Powerful workflow and decision automation platform designed to run complex business processes across multiple systems. It enables organizations to model, execute, and monitor workflows at scale, ensuring consistency, compliance, and efficiency. With support for human and system tasks, Camunda acts as the backbone for enterprise-wide orchestration, streamlining operations across finance, HR, supply chain, and customer service functions
Lobster Data
No-code integration backbone that connects systems, partners, and data flows. It supports EDI, APIs, files, and cloud applications, enabling organizations to automate processes, streamline data exchange, and build a flexible, future-proof integration layer across the enterprise. By consolidating integration needs into a single platform, it reduces complexity, lowers costs, and accelerates time-to-value for digital initiatives.
Mendix & Joget
Bring AI-Driven low-code power to orchestration by enabling the rapid creation of user-facing applications that interact seamlessly with automated processes. Allow business and IT teams to co-create solutions visually, embedding workflows, analytics, and decision logic without heavy coding. Make automation accessible, providing dashboards, mobile apps, and portals that integrate into existing enterprise ecosystems. The result is faster delivery, better adoption, and user-centric orchestration at scale.
Symphonica
Service orchestration platform designed for telecom, purpose-built to automate OSS/BSS environments at scale. It manages the full lifecycle of network and service provisioning, from order capture to activation, across legacy and next-gen technologies. Gain faster time-to-market for new services, improved service assurance, and reduced operational costs. By standardizing and automating service orchestration, it helps enterprises deliver consistent, reliable, and agile digital services.
Business Impact
Outcomes
End-to-end visibility of workflows across business units, enabling better governance.
Reduced operational costs through automation of repetitive, manual steps.
Compliance by design, as standardized processes reduce regulatory risks.
Faster SLAs and improved CX, as customers receive consistent service.
Greater agility, with processes that can be adapted quickly to new needs.
Error reduction, as human rework and duplicate entry are eliminated.
The impact of orchestration is enterprise agility. By connecting systems and automating flows, organizations gain consistency, speed, and cost efficiency.
Typical Use Cases
Employee onboarding automated across HR, payroll, IT, and facilities, reducing setup time from weeks to days.
Order-to-cash orchestration aligning CRM, ERP, and billing systems to ensure accurate invoicing and faster collections.
Network provisioning in telecoms automated, allowing faster rollout of new services with fewer support tickets.
Insurance claims processing streamlined, cutting claim resolution time by 40%.
Supply chain orchestration connecting procurement, logistics, and inventory for real-time visibility.
KYC (Know Your Customer) workflows automated in banking, improving compliance and speeding customer onboarding.
D e e p D i v e C o n t e n t
Business Orchestration Automated Platforms
Mendix | Joget | Camunda | Lobster
In Gartner’s market frameworks, each of these technologies has a well-defined primary classification, yet all are expanding their capabilities into adjacent domains. This ongoing convergence allows them — whether working together or, to varying degrees, individually — to deliver on the vision of Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (BOAT)
Note: the content and concepts in this section are inspired by Gartner’s research, as outlined in the publicly available document: Gartner – The Future of Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies. Please click below to download the full report.
The Future of Business Orchestration
Successful digital solutions are built on three complementary pillars:
Experience (user-facing applications),
Orchestration (end-to-end workflows and decisions)
Connectivity (system and partner integration).
At the center lies Intelligence, which powers adaptability and continuous optimization. Together, these dimensions ensure organizations can connect, automate, and scale business capabilities seamlessly.
The evolution of automation has moved from heavy, process-centric BPM suites in 2005, to task-centric and lightweight tools such as RPA, iPaaS, and low-code platforms in 2015.
From 2025, Gartner envisions a shift to AI-embedded, consolidated platforms — Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (BOAT) — that unify connectivity, workflows, and intelligence. Looking ahead to 2035, the future points toward orchestrated autonomous agents, where self-learning systems coordinate business processes with minimal human intervention.
Evolution of Business Orchestration
Market Trends
"Customers are asking for a platform that can cater to end-to-end needs of different types of automation use cases"
This diagram from Gartner illustrates the foundations of Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies (BOAT).
Key Capabilities
Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies are defined by a broad set of capabilities that span integration, workflow execution, user experience, intelligence, and governance. Together, these capabilities ensure enterprises can connect systems, orchestrate processes, embed AI, and operate securely at scale.
