Digital Automation Platforms Comparative Study
Mohammed Abdou, Abdelrahman M. Ezz, Ibrahim Farag · 2021
Digital Automation Platforms are considered as a new category of programming without writing codes which increases the developer's access to many online services and IoT platforms through APIs. The proliferation of IoT, the connectivity of most of the devices to the internet and the growth of cloud-based services introduced new service-based automation platforms. Digital Platforms are a trigger-action programming that aim to make a set of workflows integrating different devices, provide useful functionality without having technical knowledge using graphical interface, automate human repetitive tasks, and offer certain types of decision-making capabilities. Many applications are integrated with these platforms, giving the user a high degree of freedom to create his own service via choosing both trigger and action. In this work, a comparative study is presented in order to differentiate between five automation platforms: Zapier, IFTTT, Integromat, Microsoft Power Automate and Parabola using various comparison metrics: accessibility, usability, time responsiveness with pricing model, integrability, and Security risks.