Microsoft’s Power Platform to better integrate with SAP and Oracle with Clear Software acquisition

To be more customer accommodating, Microsoft has acquired the company Clear Software to help its Power Platform leverage 3rd connectivity while also chasing a growing process automation trend.

In a pretty straightforward post to the Microsoft Power Platform blog, partner general manager of Power Automate Stephen Siciliano explains the need for the company to bolster its efforts to meet customers on their own turf when providing SAP extensions and iPaaS services.

We want to make it easier for customers to integrate a variety of systems when they build business applications with Microsoft Power Platform. The Clear Software integrations will make it a more seamless experience to use Power Apps and Power Automate to build business applications and automations over complex systems like SAP and Oracle.

It comes with more than 100 pre-built abstractions over these systems and can be customized in UI to support each organization’s unique needs. We will share more with customers about how to access the new capabilities in the future.

Details of purchase price or timelines have not been made available, but it seems plausible that Microsoft gets Clear Software integrated quickly to help it leverage a growth sector of process automation that occurred in some form for 40% of companies in 2019 and could account for 60% of occupations according to Forrester estimates and a McKinsey survey.

Microsoft currently has a toe in the process automation market with its investments in Process Advisor which allow its customers to leverage Power Automate in broader “hyper automation” scenarios.