With low-code to no code automation development emerging as one of the hottest markets in enterprise technology, Microsoft is well equipped to disrupt the market leaders in a big way as it rolls out another slew of updates to its Power Platform.
Microsoft’s Power Platform is a suite of products, that includes Power Apps, Power Automate and Power BI. They can be used by people with minimal coding skills to create and deploy customized applications that run on desktops and mobile devices via a low-code interface.
In the past couple of years, we have witnessed automation software platforms already democratized application development to a great extent. Now that employees get to create their own apps and automations for simple day-to-day tasks easily using these tools to streamline their work.
Microsoft holds the largest pie of enterprise customers, and it becomes easy for Microsoft users to adapt the Power Platform products for their day-to-day tasks than exploring new tools.
Yesterday, 2nd March 2021 Microsoft has announced that very soon it is making the Power Automate Desktop available for free for all Windows 10 users in Microsoft Ignite 2021 virtual event. This is a game changer and I expect this will considerably disrupt the automation industry.
What is Power Automate Desktop?
Power Automate Desktop is a low-code RPA tool that enables you to automate your day-to-day repetitive tasks. You can think of it as a Macro with steroids.
Robotic Process Automation makes it possible to automate workflows across modern and legacy applications on your desktop by recording actions such as mouse and keyboard clicks. RPA is termed as a non-invasive automation technique as it does enable automation at the UI layer interacting across multiple applications by emulating human actions.
Power Automate Desktop was launched in September 2020 and is based on Microsoft’s acquisition of Softomotive (an RPA software company) in early 2020. But Microsoft has since then extended Softomotive’s technology and integrated it deeper into its own stack.
“If you are interested in trying out Power Automate Desktop, you can download here for FREE.”