Gartner defines business process automation (BPA) tools as software that automates business processes by enabling orchestration and choreography of diverse sets of actors (humans, systems and bots) involved in the execution of the process. BPA tools provide an environment for developing and running applications that incorporate process models (and optionally other business, decision and data models) enabling digitization of business operations
Gartner defines low-code application platforms (LCAPs) as application platforms that are used to rapidly develop and run custom applications by abstracting and minimizing the use of programming languages. Enterprise LCAPs are a subset of this market that target a wider range of developer personas — especially enterprise developers — and provide features essential for application delivery and maintenance in midsize and large organizations. These features include support for high performance, availability and scalability of applications, disaster recovery, security, API access to (and from) enterprise and third-party cloud services, usage monitoring, service-level agreements, and availability of technical support and training. LCAPs are the foundation for a wide range of application types, application components and process automation.