Guide to choosing the right SOAP solution

Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms (SOAPs) have become a strategic necessity for enterprises struggling to manage the complexity of modern IT environments. Operations teams must juggle thousands of interdependent workflows, bridge data across cloud-native applications and legacy ERP systems and meet evolving performance expectations. Reactive automation is no longer sufficient.

Intelligent orchestration ensures business processes execute reliably, securely and without unnecessary manual intervention. As hybrid environments expand, data pipelines multiply and digital initiatives accelerate, unified orchestration platforms have become mission-critical.

This leap is reflected in the 2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SOAP. Vendors are being evaluated on execution in addition to how well they support end-to-end processes, hybrid environments and governance at scale.

If you’re in the process of selecting a SOAP solution, use this practical guide to evaluating your options, with insights inspired by Gartner’s criteria and industry trends.

What is a SOAP — and why does it matter more than ever?

According to Gartner, “SOAPs unify workflow orchestration, workload automation and resource provisioning, extending across data pipelines and cloud-native architectures.”

SOAPs represent the evolution of traditional workload automation beyond job scheduling. These platforms are crucial for bringing order to complex IT environments that span on-premises, multi-cloud and hybrid environments. They matter because they provide a centralized hub to coordinate workflows across diverse systems — both within an organization and across an ecosystem for suppliers and distributors. They reduce risk by providing end-to-end visibility and control and improve business agility by reducing manual intervention.

A modern SOAP coordinates dependencies, enforces service-level agreements (SLAs) and triggers workflows based on events, making it essential for:

• Digital transformation in finance, supply chain and IT operations
• Cloud modernization initiatives
• AI and machine learning (ML) adoption that requires governed data movement
• Compliance with security and regulatory frameworks

The “right” SOAP solution should reduce human error, free up IT to focus strategic priorities and streamline how automation is designed, maintained and governed. It should support faster response to business and market shifts, break down silos by connecting legacy systems and cloud services and enable seamless coordination across your technology ecosystem. Most importantly, it should enhance visibility, control and auditability with a unified view of every process, so your automation is as trustworthy as it is efficient.

Key evaluation criteria when choosing a SOAP solution

Here are six areas to include in your evaluation, inspired by trends surfaced in the Gartner report and common attributes among SOAP Leaders.

Scalability and performance

The platform should be able to handle high volumes of automated tasks without performance degradation. Ask whether it can support millions of jobs per day and how it performs under peak loads. A SOAP must be resilient and elastic enough to accommodate sudden surges in workload without compromising execution times or reliability. Scalability is about sustained performance, not just capacity.

Cloud-native architecture and SaaS delivery

When evaluating a SOAP solution, start with how the platform itself is built and delivered. A truly SaaS-native platform doesn’t just “run in the cloud;” it’s designed for elastic scale, multi-tenant performance and frictionless updates. Look for characteristics like agentless architecture, stateless services, zero-maintenance provisioning and high availability built into the core. These reduce operational overhead and speed up onboarding.

Deployment flexibility and hybrid orchestration support

It’s not just how the platform is built but also how it operates. A SOAP platform must support orchestration across your entire environment, from legacy mainframes to modern SaaS apps, cloud services, containers and DevOps pipelines. Seek flexible endpoint support, native connectors and the ability to run across multiple clouds, regions or tenants without custom scripting or duplicate workflows.

Ease of use and low-code accessibility

Automation should be democratized. Your SOAP platform should provide a low-code interface that enables IT operators, developers and even power users on the business side to design and modify workflows. Features like drag-and-drop workflow designers and reusable templates make it easier to build, test and share workflows. Integrated documentation and governance reduce training time and increase adoption. 

Observability and monitoring

It’s not enough to execute a job. You need to know what happened, why, and what could go wrong next time. Real-time dashboards, job dependency maps, SLA monitors and predictive alerting help teams quickly isolate failures and understand upstream/downstream impact. A strong observability layer turns the SOAP into a diagnostic tool, not just a transaction engine.

AI-powered productivity

It’s key to empower your teams with specific and valuable assistance for using the product and operating the platform to deliver efficient, reliable and observable automation fabrics. AI is now embedded into how automation platforms help users work faster, smarter and with greater confidence. AI features can significantly reduce time-to-value and operational risk. Whether you’re troubleshooting a failed job or optimizing a business-critical process, AI-powered diagnostics accelerate root-cause analysis, helping your teams resolve issues before they cause downstream delays. Equally important is AI’s role in design-time productivity. Context-aware configurations and AI-optimized change management can reduce the friction involved in building new workflows.

Security and governance

Security and compliance should be built in, not bolted on. SOAPs must support enterprise-grade authentication and authorization, including single sign-on (SSO), multi-factor authentication (MFA) and role-based access control (RBAC). They should also be able to encrypt data in transit and at rest and offer detailed audit logs. Look for support for compliance frameworks like SOC 2, ISO 27001 or HIPAA, depending on your industry. Governance features should also enable fine-grained control over who can modify, execute or monitor workflows.

Extensibility and ecosystem

No SOAP platform operates in a vacuum; it must integrate cleanly with your existing infrastructure, applications and cloud services. Look for out-of-the-box connectors, a rich library of APIs and support for event-driven triggers. The more extensible the platform, the more value it will deliver as your tech stack evolves.

Trends shaping the SOAP landscape in 2025

“By 2029, 90% of organizations currently delivering workload automation will be using service orchestration and automation platforms (SOAPs) to orchestrate workloads and data pipelines in hybrid environments across IT and business domains.”

2025 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SOAP report

SOAP solutions are evolving rapidly. Let’s examine a few trends shaping enterprise automation strategies this year.

• Convergence with adjacent tools: Modern SOAPs increasingly overlap with iPaaS, managed file transfer (MFT) and IT Service Management (ITSM) platforms. Expect tighter ecosystems and fewer isolated tools.
• AI-enhanced observability: Predictive analytics, anomaly detection and proactive SLA risk insights are fast becoming differentiators, especially in high-volume scenarios. The report notes that, “By 2029, 75% of SOAP workflows will leverage generative AI (GenAI) to increase troubleshooting efficiency by 50% — up from less than 10% in 2025.”
• Orchestration for analytics workloads: Data must flow faster and more reliably. As AI becomes operationalized, orchestrating data is just as important as model performance.
• Citizen automation: Business users want self-service tools without compromising governance, and IT needs to enforce guardrails. SOAPs now must deliver both to enable scalable citizen automation.
• Centralized control across domains: Fragmented platforms are falling behind. SOAPs that serve as a control plane for hybrid IT, cloud, data and business workflows are rising to the top.

What sets Leaders apart in the Gartner® Magic Quadrant™

According to Gartner Magic Quadrant™ research methodology, “Leaders execute well against their current vision and are well-positioned for tomorrow.” Choosing a Leader as your SOAP vendor doesn’t guarantee success, but it does reduce risk, accelerate ROI and align you with those invested in long-term innovation.

Why organizations are turning to RunMyJobs by Redwood

When enterprises outgrow reactive automation, they turn to RunMyJobs. It’s purpose-built for orchestrating complex, enterprise-wide workloads.

RunMyJobs helps global organizations automate with confidence through:

• SAP Endorsed App, Premium certification — SAP’s highest standard for performance, security and integration
• Robust hybrid connectivity to seamlessly connect on-premises systems (e.g., ERP, WMS, MES) with multiple public cloud services
• Event-based triggers and integrated data management
• SaaS-native, agentless architecture built for scale, with no infrastructure maintenance
• Built-in observability via Redwood Insights with pre-built dashboards and the ability to customize
• AI-powered productivity enhancements that range from knowledge access to troubleshooting to actual design and development of automation workflows
• Low-code workflow design for both IT and business users
• Enterprise-grade security and compliance
• Decades of automation expertise and two consecutive years of being named a Leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant™ for SOAP

Choosing the right SOAP solution means choosing the foundation for your automation future. Make the investment count — for what your business needs today and what it will demand tomorrow. Read the full analyst report today.