What is service orchestration and automation?

Service orchestration and automation is the process of integrating and managing various IT services and resources to coordinate different components of the IT environments, manage end-to-end IT operations and streamline business processes. Service orchestration tools operate at the highest level of the IT infrastructure. This way, they facilitate IT teams to oversee processes, track resources, and connect distinct tasks into comprehensive end-to-end processes from a centralized control point, without depending on custom scripting. Service orchestration coordinates and manages multiple interconnected services and systems to deliver complex IT and business processes. Some cloud orchestration platforms and workload automation tools have evolved to include service orchestration features, transforming into comprehensive service orchestration platforms (SOAPs). Given these expanding capabilities, identifying the ideal platform for your digital business can be challenging. As SOAPs increasingly integrate with DevOps pipelines and support cloud-native infrastructure and application architectures, it's crucial to choose a platform that aligns with your organization's specific needs, flexibility, and interoperability.

Benefits of service orchestration

The benefits of service orchestration platforms are numerous and can have a significant impact on IT operations. Here's a list with brief explanations: 1. Unified Management: Service orchestration platforms centralize the management of disparate processes and systems, allowing IT teams to oversee workflows across on-premises and cloud-based environments from a single tool. 2. Improved SLAs: By providing real-time monitoring and auto-remediation capabilities, service orchestration platforms can detect and address delays, overruns, or failures more efficiently. This enhances the ability to meet Service Level Agreements (SLAs), leading to improved response times and reduced downtime. 3. Rapid DevOps: These platforms support DevOps strategies by enabling seamless automation of Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment (CI/CD) pipelines. Drag-and-drop workflow designers and reusable components make it easier to develop new services and end-to-end processes, speeding up DevOps cycles. 4. Operational Peace of Mind: With auto-remediation, monitoring, and timely alerting features, IT teams can address issues proactively. This reduces the time spent "fighting fires" and allows IT professionals to focus on strategic initiatives. 5. Greater Efficiency and Cost Savings: Universal connectors and API automation allow IT teams to automate more processes and reduce manual tasks. This efficiency leads to cost savings by minimizing idle resources and ensuring systems are decommissioned during periods of low utilization. 6. Consistency and Reliability: Orchestration ensures that tasks and workflows are executed in a logical flow, leading to consistent outcomes. This reduces the risk of performance issues or outages due to errors or misconfiguration. 7. Improved Collaboration: Service orchestration platforms can foster collaboration across multiple IT domains, such as network, security, and development, by providing a unified view of processes and workflows. 8. Quicker Application Deployment: With orchestration, applications can be deployed more quickly and efficiently, improving customer experiences and allowing organizations to stay competitive in the market.

Enterprise Software Workload Automation WLA Orchestration

Compare Top 10 Service Orchestration Platforms

Hazal Şimşek

updated on Dec 1, 2025

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Gartner predicts that by 2025, 80% of organizations will replace automation tools with service orchestration and automation platforms (SOAPs).¹ These platforms orchestrate complex automation workflows and help implement business services that span multiple cloud environments. With their ability to manage automated processes, SOAPs reduce operational overhead and boost agility.

In this article, AIMultiple compares top service orchestration platforms based on B2B review scores and features.

Service orchestration tool	# of employees	# of B2B review	Average score
ActiveBatch	533	251	4.4
RunMyJobs by Redwood	533	140	4.8
Stonebranch	152	79	4.8
Fortra's JAMS	1,721	142	4.7
Ansible	5	183	4.4
BMC Control-M	9,941	150	4.7
CA Automic Workload Automation	13,212	14	4.4
HCL Workload Automation	246,445	10	4.6
OpCon by SMA Technologies	157	30	4.6
Tidal Software	533	50	4.8

The table above lists vendors in alphabetical order, except for the sponsors, who are listed at the top of the list.

ActiveBatch

ActiveBatch is a workload automation and job scheduling platform that can automate and orchestrate end-to-end workflows across different environments. Key functionalities include real-time monitoring, job dependencies, and SLA management, along with several other notable capabilities like:

Pre-built job steps library, reducing the effort developers expend on researching, designing, coding, testing, and maintaining custom scripts
Drag-and-drop interface for workflow design, simplifying orchestration across applications, databases, and cloud services
Super REST API Adapter to connect with internal systems and applications, facilitating rapid development of API integrations for with new technologies

Explore more on ActiveBatch self-service portal for business users:

Analyze the offerings, pros & cons of ActiveBatch in-details.

RunMyJobs

RunMyJobs is a SaaS workload automation platform that orchestrates business-critical processes across on-premises and cloud environments.

RunMyJobs offers:

A SaaS architecture managed by Redwood team
Pre-built connectors to various applications and platforms like data management, container orchestration and GenAI tools (e.g. ChatGPT).
Integrations with the highest number of SAP modules, such as: S/4HANA, BTP, and SAP Industry Solutions, offering out-of-the-box SAP wizards and 1000+ SAP job templates
A centralized dashboard for managing automated processes .

Figure 1: RunMyJobs monitoring capabilities²

Learn more on the offerings, pros & cons of RunMyJobs in-details.

Stonebranch

Stonebranch is a real-time IT orchestration and automation platform for hybrid and multi-cloud IT environments. It supports orchestration of workflows across different systems, offering a drag-and-drop interface for building automation workflows.

Stonebranch provides features like centralized monitoring, real-time job execution, and integration with third-party applications. It is designed to enable seamless orchestration of complex processes, reducing operational overhead and improving efficiency.

Figure 5: Stonebranch platform workflow management example ³

Explore more on Stonebranch and Stonebranch alternatives based on features, pros & cons considering B2B user reviews and scores.

Fortra’s Jams Scheduler

Fortra’s JAMS Scheduler is an enterprise-grade job scheduling and automation platform that orchestrates IT workflows across diverse systems. It supports the orchestration of complex processes, enabling IT teams to automate tasks across different applications and cloud services.

Jams Scheduler provides a centralized interface for managing jobs, with features such as error handling, alerting, and reporting. It offers integration with third-party tools and APIs to create comprehensive automation workflows, improving operational efficiency.

Figure 2: Fortra’s Jams workflow orchestration ⁴

Ansible by Red Hat

Red Hat Ansible is an open-source IT automation platform that uses a human-readable language (YAML) for playbooks and automation scripts.

Ansible supports multi-platform orchestration, providing a flexible approach to automation. Key functionalities include agentless automation, modularity, and integration with cloud services and other applications, making it a versatile tool for service orchestration.

BMC Control-M

BMC Control-M is a workload automation platform that orchestrates IT processes across mainframe, distributed, and cloud environments.

Control-M supports:

Unified interface for scheduling and executing workflows.
Real-time monitoring, SLA management, and resource optimization.
Dependency management and self-service automation features.

Explore Control-m alternatives considering their features, pros & cons evaluating B2B user reviews and scores.

CA Automic Automation

CA Automic Automation is an enterprise-grade workload automation platform that orchestrates complex business processes across hybrid cloud and on‑premises environments.

The platform offers:

Centralized workflow management
Real-time monitoring and event-driven automation
Automated job dependencies and SLA management.

Discover top Atomic competitors and other CA tools like AutoSys alternatives based on B2B review analysis.

HCL Workload Automation

HCL Workload Automation is a service orchestration platform that optimize IT processes and enable job scheduling across complex environments. The tool offers:

Centralized interface to coordinate services, applications, and systems,
Cross-platform interactions for multi-tiered IT architectures,
Suitable for organizations seeking to automate and orchestrate large IT landscapes.

Figure 3: HCL Universal orchestrator architecture ⁵

OpCon by SMA Technologies

OpCon is an enterprise workload automation platform that orchestrates business-critical processes across on‑premises, cloud, and hybrid environments.

Some of the notable capabilities are:

Designed to improve operational efficiency and reduce manual tasks,
Event-driven workflows and cross-platform automation,
Role-based access control.

Tidal Software

Tidal Software is a workload automation and orchestration platform for hybrid and multi-cloud environments that centralizes workflow definition, scheduling, and monitoring.

Tidal Software offers key functionalities like:

SLA management and cross-platform automation,
Event-driven workflows and third-party integrations,
Flexible automation workflows for complex processes.

Figure 6: Tidal Software Data Repository architecture ⁶

Screening for top service orchestration platforms

To help you select the best service orchestration platform, AIMultiple has established a set of screening criteria to shortlist the top platforms in the market:

Company size: 100+ employees on LinkedIn.
B2B market presence: Average score 4+ and 10+ reviews across 5 B2B review platforms (G2, Trustradius, Gartner, Capterra, and PeerSpot).

The 6 key capabilities of service orchestration platforms

Gartner identifies six key capabilities of Service Orchestration and Automation Platforms (SOAPs):

Figure 7: 6 key capabilities for service orchestration platforms

Workflow orchestration

SOAPs provide a centralized graphical interface for designing and orchestrating workflows across applications and platforms. Visual flow design represents task interdependencies and enables process orchestration.

Event-driven automation

Event-based automation triggers enable a shift from time-based scheduling to responsive, event-driven automation.Workflows initiate on specific events, reducing manual intervention.

Self-service automation

SOAPs empower business users beyond IT and operations to manage routine processes through role-based access control (RBAC), freeing IT to focus on higher-value initiatives.

Scheduling, monitoring, visibility, and alerting

These capabilities provide teams with real-time visibility into workloads and scheduled tasks, and configurable alerts that notify relevant users of issues, supporting SLA improvements across platforms.

Resource provisioning

It automates resource provisioning and deprovisioning across cloud and hybrid environments to optimize resource allocation, reduce waste, and scale with demand.

Managing data pipelines

Manages data flows, including ingestion of multiple streams and automated file transfers. SOAPs can programmatically create, schedule, and monitor data pipelines and integrate with business tools, acting as data orchestration platforms.

This is why, SOAPs can be utilized as data orchestration tools.

Service orchestration platforms for Hybrid IT

IT automation stats show that 40% of all enterprise workloads are estimated to be deployed in cloud infrastructure, increasing demand for hybrid cloud automation and multi-cloud orchestration tools.

Service orchestration tools can deliver capabilities for an organization’s hybrid digital infrastructure. These capabilities allow them to act like a cloud orchestration platform.

Infrastructure as code

It allows to provision and manage cloud resources using machine-readable code, eliminating the need for manual setup or physical hardware configuration. This approach enhances automation, increases repeatability, and reduces the risk of human error during deployment and scaling operations.

Container orchestration

With the widespread adoption of containerized applications for cloud-based services, service orchestration tools must support effective management and deployment of containers. This capability ensures efficient scaling, rapid deployment, and seamless operations for container-based workloads across hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

Multi-cloud support

Given the variety of cloud platforms in use today, service orchestration tools must support multi-cloud environments. This includes efficient load balancing, scaling, and managing resources across public, private, and hybrid clouds. A reliable orchestration tool provides a unified interface to interact with different cloud platforms, offering flexibility and adaptability.

API automation

To streamline operations and manage complex workflows, service orchestration tools leverage automation through application programming interfaces (APIs). This feature allows automated configuration, integration, and control of various cloud services. It enables you to automate tasks, manage interconnected systems, and improve overall efficiency.