The Control Tower Enterprises Didn’t Know They Needed: Orchestration in 2025
By Prakash Palani
The Early Days: From Automation to Orchestration
In 2018, most enterprises had automation, but orchestration was barely part of the conversation. Scripts and tools were abundant — from Shell scripts and PowerShell to ABAP, Python, Terraform, and Ansible. Each solved local challenges, yet remained confined to silos.
What was missing was a unified layer that could connect these fragmented solutions into an enterprise-wide flow. The idea of orchestration existed ahead of its time — unrecognized, unnamed, and often misunderstood.
The Challenge of Pioneering
When orchestration platforms first emerged, enterprises began to recognize the distinction between isolated automation and cross-stack orchestration. Unlike single-framework solutions from hyperscalers, orchestration offered something broader — the ability to span across cloud, operating systems, databases, and enterprise applications simultaneously.
Analyst communities initially struggled to classify orchestration because it did not fit into existing categories. It sat above them, integrating domains traditionally evaluated separately. That challenge is the hallmark of pioneering technologies: they are difficult to define until the market catches up.
Time Validates the Vision
In 2025, the market narrative has shifted. RFPs from enterprises now explicitly demand capabilities such as “enterprise orchestration,” “cross-stack automation,” and “control layer governance.” Concepts once viewed as niche are now considered fundamental.
This progression reflects a broader market validation: orchestration has become essential to managing complex enterprise landscapes.
From Basis Automation to Enterprise-Wide Orchestration
What began with SAP Basis automation has since evolved into full-scale enterprise orchestration. Today, orchestration spans:
Orchestration now extends beyond SAP to Salesforce, Microsoft Dynamics, Ariba, SuccessFactors, and other enterprise platforms — ensuring that automation is not fragmented, but harmonized.
Agentic Orchestration: A New Paradigm
The next stage of evolution is agentic orchestration. Instead of simply executing pre-defined tasks, workflows can now reason, adapt, and act autonomously.
Example: A financial close job in SAP fails at midnight due to a blocked cost center. Traditionally, this would trigger alerts and require manual intervention. With agentic orchestration, the system not only detects the issue but also reasons through corrective steps — ensuring the job completes by morning without disruption.
This represents a shift from automation as a reactive tool to orchestration as an adaptive control layer.
The Control Tower Metaphor
An airport without a control tower can still operate flights, but not without risk, inefficiency, and chaos. Enterprises without orchestration face a similar reality: isolated automations functioning independently, without visibility or coordination.
Orchestration acts as the enterprise control tower — overseeing applications, systems, and processes to ensure synchronized, secure, and efficient operations.
Looking Ahead
From our humble beginnings to challenging the giants, from being “too early” to becoming the benchmark, Symphony’s journey is proof of one thing: innovation plus persistence eventually changes the market.
With Agentic AI, the control tower is gaining even sharper vision. Soon, enterprises won’t just automate tasks — they’ll have agents that orchestrate outcomes.
That’s the future we’re building. And that’s why in 2025, Symphony remains the control tower you didn’t know you needed — until now