What Is BOAT (Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies)?

BOAT (Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies) is the category created by Gartner to describe platforms that unify process orchestration, automation (RPA), system integration (iPaaS), low-code development, and artificial intelligence within a unified orchestration and automation layer. Instead of operating RPA, Business Process Management (BPM), and integration tools as separate solutions, a BOAT platform coordinates end-to-end business processes, connecting systems, data, AI agents, and human actions within the same environment.

Gartner first introduced the concept in 2024 in the report Quick Answer: Beyond RPA, BPA and Low Code — The Future Is BOAT, and consolidated the category in October 2025 with the publication of the first Magic Quadrant for Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies, updated in September 2026 with a second edition of the report.

Why Gartner Created This Category

For years, companies treated automation as a problem involving isolated tools: RPA for repetitive tasks, BPM for process modeling, iPaaS for system integration, and low-code for rapidly building applications. Each category evolved separately, but in practice, vendors began incorporating capabilities from one another. RPA platforms added process orchestration. BPM tools began integrating bots. Low-code platforms added connectors and AI.

According to Gartner, the average Fortune 500 company is expected to operate more than 150,000 AI agents by 2028, compared with fewer than 15 in 2025, and only 13% of organizations believe they currently have adequate governance to handle this proliferation of agents (agent sprawl). BOAT gives this convergence a name: it is not a new technology, but rather the recognition that the automation market is merging into a single layer.

The Technologies That Make Up BOAT

According to Gartner, a BOAT platform combines four historically separate categories:

RPA (Robotic Process Automation) automates structured and repetitive tasks and can operate through both user interfaces and system integrations.

BPA (Business Process Automation), including BPM, orchestrates complex workflows that span multiple systems, teams, and departments.

iPaaS (Integration Platform as a Service) connects cloud and on-premises systems through APIs, allowing data to flow between ERP, CRM, legacy systems, and new applications.

LCAP (Low-Code Application Platforms) accelerates the creation of applications and interfaces without requiring extensive traditional development.

In addition to this core, mature BOAT platforms add further capabilities: intelligent document processing (IDP), process mining and task mining to map real-world processes, and governance, security, and observability layers that ensure traceability over what has been automated.

AI agents play a specific role within this layer. Instead of simply executing a fixed step, they analyze the context of an ongoing process and determine the next action: for example, dynamically routing a request to the appropriate queue based on the content of a document, identifying an exception that does not follow the expected pattern and sending it for human review, or adjusting the execution order of a workflow according to the priority of the case. This ability to make real-time decisions within the orchestration itself is what differentiates an AI agent from a static automation rule, which is why it is typically treated as part of the orchestration engine rather than as an additional tool plugged in externally.

How BOAT Differs From Standalone RPA, BPM, or iPaaS

The key difference lies not in the individual technologies, but in how they relate to one another. RPA automates a discrete task. BPM models and executes a process. iPaaS moves data between systems. In isolation, each solves one part of the problem, but creates “automation islands”: different teams maintaining different tools, without end-to-end process visibility.

A BOAT platform treats RPA, integrations, and low-code applications as execution methods within a broader orchestration model, rather than as parallel systems. A useful way to visualize this difference is to think of a BOAT platform as a control plane: a central control layer that coordinates distributed automation capabilities, data, systems, and people, rather than having each tool operate independently and disconnected from the others.

This difference becomes clearer when the two approaches are compared directly. In isolated automation, with RPA, BPM, or iPaaS operating separately, the scope is limited to a specific task or process, governance is fragmented by tool, maintenance is divided among multiple teams and contracts, AI is added externally when present, and visibility is limited to each individual tool.

In a BOAT platform, by contrast, the scope becomes the end-to-end process across systems and teams. Governance is centralized, with a single audit layer. Maintenance is consolidated into a single layer. AI is embedded in orchestration and decision-making rather than added externally. And visibility covers the complete process, not just isolated steps.

Is BOAT Just a New Name for BPM?

It is a legitimate question and one worth addressing directly: BOAT does not replace BPM; it expands its traditional scope, incorporating capabilities such as RPA, integration, low-code, and AI into a broader orchestration approach. The most common criticism of the term is that “orchestrating end-to-end processes” was, in essence, already the promise of BPM in the 2000s. The practical difference is scope: traditional BPM rarely included native RPA, robust iPaaS integration, and generative AI as part of the same product. What Gartner is naming is the commercial consolidation of these capabilities into a single platform. It is not an entirely new technology, but it does represent a real shift in how companies purchase and operate automation, moving from a fragmented portfolio of tools to a single orchestration layer.

BOAT Adoption: What the Data Shows

According to a Gartner market analysis published in 2025, investment in consolidated orchestration and automation platforms (BOAT) is expected to grow by 35% in 2025 alone, exceeding US$7 billion, with projections to surpass US$21 billion by 2029. This growth rate reflects the pressure on companies to consolidate fragmented tools into a single orchestration layer.

Another Gartner figure, cited in the most recent report on the category, projects that by 2030, 70% of companies will adopt a centralized platform to manage the proliferation of AI agents (agent sprawl), with BOAT emerging as one of the main options for doing so. This figure updates the previous market perspective: BOAT growth is being driven not only by operational efficiency, but also by the need to control and govern AI agents at scale.

Use Cases by Business Area

End-to-end processes that span systems and departments are where BOAT shows its clearest advantage over point automation:

In finance, accounts payable orchestration, bank reconciliation, and credit origination, combining document extraction, rule validation, and ERP integration.

In HR, employee onboarding by coordinating payroll systems, access provisioning, training, and communications, which today are often handled manually and dispersed across emails and spreadsheets.

In legal, contract management with clause extraction, automated deadline alerts, and approval routing.

In customer service, automatic ticket triage and routing, combining AI-based classification with integration into CRM and support systems.

In healthcare, coordinating the patient journey across scheduling, medical records, billing, and insurance providers, systems that rarely communicate with one another without an orchestration layer.

When BOAT Is Not the Priority

Consolidating onto a BOAT platform is not the right decision for every company at every stage. It is worth pausing before migrating when the operation still has only a few automated processes: if only one or two tasks currently run through RPA, the benefit of consolidating them into an orchestration layer is limited compared with the implementation effort and cost. It may also make sense to wait when the company has just invested in a standalone tool — a specific RPA or iPaaS platform — and has not yet recouped that investment, since switching platforms at that point may create more friction than value. The learning curve also needs to be considered: even BOAT platforms with low-code interfaces require teams to understand process orchestration, not just task automation, which may require training before value can be generated. In these scenarios, the most pragmatic approach is usually to consolidate gradually, prioritizing processes with the most manual handoffs first rather than migrating the entire operation at once.

How to Assess Whether Your Company Needs a BOAT Platform

Before replacing tools, it is worth mapping three concrete signals: how many different automation tools your company currently maintains and whether they provide shared visibility; whether important processes still depend on manual handoffs between systems that are already automated independently; and whether the IT team spends more time maintaining point-to-point integrations than evolving processes. When these three signals occur together, the question shifts from “which automation tool should we buy?” to “how should we consolidate the orchestration layer?”

The Role of Smarthis

Smarthis’ work is aligned with the BOAT concept: the company connects automation, AI, data, and enterprise systems to create orchestrated operations, working at the layer that connects processes, systems, and data end to end rather than automating isolated tasks.

If your company already operates fragmented automation across multiple tools and feels the impact through maintenance costs and lack of visibility, the next step is to map the processes that rely most heavily on manual handoffs between systems. This mapping is the starting point for any consolidation into an orchestration layer. Talk to a Smarthis specialist to begin this mapping.

Frequently Asked Questions About BOAT

What Does the Acronym BOAT Mean?

BOAT stands for Business Orchestration and Automation Technologies, a term created by Gartner in 2024 to describe the convergence of RPA, BPA, iPaaS, and low-code platforms into a single automation layer.

Does BOAT Replace RPA?

It does not replace it; it encompasses it. In a BOAT platform, RPA continues to be used to automate discrete tasks, but it operates as an execution method within a broader orchestration model rather than functioning as a standalone tool.

What Is the Difference Between BOAT and Hyperautomation?

Hyperautomation is a strategy for automating and optimizing business processes by combining different technologies, such as RPA, AI, Process Mining, BPM, and integrations. BOAT represents an evolution of this approach by introducing an orchestration layer that connects automations, AI agents, systems, and people to coordinate end-to-end processes.

While hyperautomation seeks to expand a company's automation capabilities, BOAT adds the ability to orchestrate these technologies to create smarter, more integrated, and results-driven operations. Agentic Automation takes this model further, with intelligent agents directly participating in execution and decision-making within orchestrated processes.

Does Every BOAT Platform Use Artificial Intelligence?

The most mature BOAT platforms incorporate AI for document processing, decision-making, and autonomous orchestration, but Gartner's definition does not require AI as a prerequisite. The central criterion is the unified orchestration of end-to-end processes.

When Should a Company Consider Migrating to a BOAT Platform?

When automation already exists but is fragmented across multiple tools without shared visibility, creating maintenance costs and gaps between systems that should operate as a single process.