Business orchestration and automation technologies (BOAT)
Also called: BOAT · business orchestration
Gartner's category for consolidated platforms that deliver enterprise automation by orchestrating processes, people, systems, documents and AI agents.
Business orchestration and automation technologies (BOAT) is the category Gartner defined for consolidated software platforms that deliver enterprise-wide automation: process orchestration, connectivity through APIs and user interfaces, data extraction from unstructured documents, low-code configuration shared between business and IT, and platform governance. In its 2026 edition, published on 14 September 2026, Gartner made the native orchestration and governance of AI agents, including the coordination of multiple agents, a required capability. The category's planning assumption is consolidation: organizations replacing a patchwork of workflow tools, integration middleware and capture products with one platform.
The category absorbed and extended what the market previously called iBPMS (intelligent business process management suites) and digital process automation. Other analyst firms name the equivalent space differently — Everest Group calls it process orchestration products, QKS Group retains iBPMS, IDC uses intelligent process automation — but the defining test is the same: whether one platform can orchestrate the process end to end, including the systems, documents and people it crosses, under one governance model.
On this site: Process orchestration →