by Melissa Donovan
Founded in 2004, Network Automation, Inc. is a mid-market leader in automation software that streamlines and integrates business processes without expensive programming. Based in Los Angeles, CA the company provides business process automation solutions to over 10,000 small, mid-market, and Global Fortune 1000 clients across 60 countries.
High-profile customers include FedEx, IBM, Kaiser Permanente, NASA, and Verizon. Its leading products are AutoMate and AutoMate BPA Server. These span automation development, deployment, and management with a drag-and-drop environment that reduces the total cost of the automation lifecycle. Common uses include job scheduling, automated FTP, batch processing, automated backups, scripting, automated testing, event log monitoring, and automated reporting.
“Ideal AutoMate users are business and/or IT professionals who wish to streamline and automate IT or business processes that are reliant on Windows-based and/or Web-based technologies and want to do so quickly in response to market conditions, without needing to engage software programmers,” explains Gary Bishop, CEO, Network Automation.
Powerful features make up the AutoMate solution including Task Builder, which is an easy-to-use, drag-and-drop interface for developing automation applications. Triggers are objects that monitor specified system events or conditions and then cause a task to run as a result. Triggers can be set based on schedules, changes in the system, or when an entry is written into an event log.
New Updates
At the end of 2011 Network Automation announced the latest updates to its solutions, AutoMate 9 and AutoMate BPA Server 9. Several new additions differentiate the program from version 8.
The solution now offers Microsoft Azure, providing fully enabled cloud storage automation via storage services such as Binary Large Objects, Table Services, and Queue Service. This supports AutoMate’s existing AWS functionality.
Automation of a range of entity data management activities with the Microsoft Dynamics CRM software are available. This includes creation, deletion, updating, query, retrieval, storage, and reporting of all customer, product, and order data.
Lastly, automation of OCR is now possible. Covering multiple text formats into stored data is automatic and deals with formats including PDF, TIFF, JPEG, BMP, and GIF.
Version 9 of the no-code platform extends to include six new languages. Local language support highlights the value of AutoMate to enable IT and business users to quickly and easily automate tasks pre-programmed and described in a user’s language of choice. The company provides an example of how any Microsoft CRM Dynamics database can be easily integrated with external business processes like FTP, Web site interaction, quote generation, and other mission critical activities.
Additional features include revamped automation development and deployment interfaces, increasing productivity, and control of production environments.
As a whole these features add and enhance AutoMate’s already user friendly processes. “AutoMate 9 extends AutoMate’s task development capabilities to include Azure resources, Microsoft Dynamics CRM, as well as expands its capabilities to automate and integrate with Web-based applications and data. The AutoMate UI has also been extended to allow for faster automation development, deployment, and monitoring,” shares Bishop.
Users looking to work with Network Automations’ AutoMate solution can purchase version 9 on its Web site, networkautomation.com. The full platform is also available for a 30 day, free trial for interested parties. SW
