At Appian, they are steadily building on the Automation Platform. Everything new focuses on designing, automating and optimizing business processes. Process automation must continue to evolve to keep its reputation high. New scalability features and AI options have recently expanded the foundation.
Appian recently celebrated its 25th anniversary. Of course, the platform has evolved plenty in all these years. One year, the focus vocally was on Business Process Management, and the next, low-code was a key pillar in communication. Over the years, business processes have always been at the centre of software.
Nowadays, people mainly talk about process automation, a broad term within software that covers a large part of process setup. This broad coverage sets Appian apart from other software vendors on the market. This approach has built a solid reputation over 25 years, with large customers from regulated sectors such as financial services and government organizations.
Process automation at the heart of organizations
However, organizations face significant challenges. They face high customer expectations and rapid market developments. Analyzing and optimizing processes can be a valuable step in responding to these challenges. Processes are the backbone of organizations and determine how efficiently and effectively work is done. Whether it’s customer interactions, financial transactions or the delivery of products and services, everything within an organization goes through processes.
Often, processes differ from one organization to another. Although companies may have similar goals, they employ their own work methods. In addition, processes are constantly evolving. What works efficiently today may be obsolete tomorrow. Process software must, therefore, be able to continuously optimize and adjust, with automation playing a key role. Appian, therefore, sees process optimization through automation as a crucial step.
With process automation, repetitive tasks can be automated as much as possible. This requires a mix of technologies, such as Robotic Process Automation, Intelligent Document Processing, API integrations, and Artificial Intelligence. By making these components work together, companies can streamline rule-based, repetitive processes. Cumbersome manual processes can also be automated as much as possible to reduce errors.
This form of automation is often applied at the departmental level through scripts. This differs from broader automation strategies such as hyperautomation, which take an end-to-end approach. Appian’s broad approach is one of the platform’s strengths in that it has expertise in every area of process automation. This is supplemented as needed with knowledge and technology from partners.

The perfect match
A process has many routines hidden within it. There are usually rules associated with them. The number of employees involved in a process can often not be counted on one hand in a large organization, but they have to perform actions orchestrated. Routine tasks allow you to fully or partially automate what is necessary. The nice thing about this is the accelerated development of AI, which allows your organization to make future adjustments to the process quickly. Because despite the routine nature of the work, some things can and should be adjusted over time.
For example, process automation can be useful for onboarding new employees. If a lot of manual work still occurs within that process, several departments are involved. HR professionals often play a role on the first day, but the IT department is also called in to provide equipment and get them started on systems.
In an automated workflow, the HR professional enters a start date, after which new actions are automatically initiated. For example, arranging equipment, assigning access rights, and scheduling an induction program—all automated where possible, of course. The system continues to involve employees in the steps where human intervention is required.
Tip: Process HQ steals the show in 24.2 release of Appian Platform
Autososcale makes its appearance
One reason Appian is popular with large organizations is the platform’s scalability. The software supports a large number of processes. The introduction of Autoscale has taken additional steps in this regard. Companies can purchase this stand-alone option separately to expand their capacity further. This allows them to run up to 6 million processes per hour, a tenfold increase from what was previously possible.
This significant gain is partly possible because Appian has optimized its process engine. That had not received a major update in recent years, but the engine is now significantly more powerful thanks to code improvements.
At Autoscale, the Appian platform handles the crucial aspects of extremely high process volumes. Organizations do not have to arrange cloud infrastructure, set up Kubernetes operators, set up datastores, or manage microservices. Thanks to its revamped architecture, the platform dynamically adjusts the required process execution capacity to demand, up to 6 million processes per hour.
The high throughput and processing capacity will be more than sufficient in practice. The maximum will not be reached soon, but peak moments can be handled effortlessly. For example, consider a bank processing millions of transactions per hour-such scenarios are fully supported.

Another key component to achieving a big win is using the Java Virtual Machine (JVM). This is where the process definition is loaded. The process definition contains crucial information, such as node configuration and smart services. The JVM then executes the logic and other tasks from the process definition. The Appian platform can handle high process volumes by using the JVM in conjunction with a horizontally scalable infrastructure and a Kubernetes architecture.
To use Autoscale, this feature must first be enabled. This can be done in the Process Modeler component, where users normally set up workflows in a no-code interface. In this, tasks of an entire process can be set up, such as determining the data storage location within the infrastructure and retrieving data from a SaaS platform. An important thing to consider is that not every process action supports Autoscale, but this can be taken into account when designing workflows.
AI for processes
In that respect, Autoscale is a major upgrade for Appian, allowing it to continue supporting business growth. It also sees an increasing role for AI, as processes are ideally suited for AI. The structured operation of business processes lends itself perfectly to AI applications, for example, by identifying patterns in data that would normally remain hidden.
For this type of process insight, AI Copilot is now available. This generative AI assistant, which now responds 40 percent faster due to some optimizations, can be used for KPI recommendations and summarizing insights. Users can then more easily act on these to make improvements.
Since 2023, Appian has also been focusing a lot on AI Skills. We have covered these AI Skills in a separate article, explaining how these algorithms achieve a specific goal. For example, an AI Skill can extract information from documents. The document extraction AI Skill can now automatically detect and consolidate multi-page tables. This streamlines data extraction and eliminates the need for manual workarounds.
Ultimately, the insights AI extracts from process data can also lead to Appian making more accurate predictions about trends. This ties in well with the introduction of Autoscale. When a peak load is predicted, Autoscale can ensure that companies can handle the extra capacity, thus allowing organizations to optimize their processes and flexibility.
Leading the way
The introduction of Autoscale and the new AI insights ensure that Appian maintains a strong platform. In doing so, it responds to organizations’ changing needs. Companies’ market position will be determined by their ability to simplify complex processes, process large amounts of data, and make intelligent decisions. With these innovations, Appian positions itself as the platform for organizations that want to stay ahead in a rapidly changing world.
Tip: Appian’s Data Fabric gets more value out of data, wherever it resides