Workflow Landscape and Roadmap

New Azure-hosted services signal changes to Microsoft’s workflow platforms. Workflow platforms deliver specialized software to automate complex, long-running processes where each process step can be done by a separate automated system or person. For these kinds of processes, workflow platforms can offer simpler maintenance and deliver better performance and reliability than general-purpose software development platforms. This report summarizes Microsoft’s most important workflow platforms and forecasts which will get the most investment from Microsoft. This information can help organizations choose workflow platforms for new projects and decide how long to keep the workflow platforms they already use.

Workflow Platform Summary, Benefits, and Risks

In this report, “workflow” refers to custom scripts that automate business and IT processes such as reviewing content for publication to an organization’s intranet, approving a new vendor for its purchasing system, or removing access to systems by a terminated employee. Workflows are used for application customization (adding custom processes to a business application) and application integration (defining custom processes that cut across multiple applications). The applications customized or integrated can be on-premises or hosted by a service provider. A workflow platform delivers design tools, an execution engine with connectors to applications, and hosting infrastructure for workflows. (See the illustration “Workflow Platform Overview“.)