Workato built its reputation on a best-in-class cloud integration and automation platform — one that eliminates the complexity of connecting applications and orchestrating workflows at scale. But the reality of modern enterprise IT is more nuanced. Data residency requirements, regulatory mandates, legacy infrastructure, and tightly controlled network perimeters mean that a one-size-fits-all cloud model isn’t always an option.
A cloud-native platform with flexibility at its core
Workato’s multi-tenant cloud remains the gold standard for organizations that want rapid time-to-value, effortless scaling, and continuous platform innovation without the overhead of infrastructure management. It’s fast, resilient, and continuously updated with new capabilities.
But Workato has always recognized that enterprise IT comes with constraints. Some organizations must keep data within specific geographic or network boundaries. Others operate manufacturing floors, retail edge locations, or air-gapped environments that are physically disconnected from the internet. Regulated industries such as finance, healthcare, and government face strict requirements around where data can travel and who can access it.
Workato offers a layered set of deployment options that let you place automation logic and data processing exactly where your architecture demands.
Five ways to use Workato beyond the public cloud
Each option below addresses a distinct set of requirements — from network-level isolation to fully on-premises execution. The right choice depends on your data residency obligations, network topology, and operational preferences.
01 — Virtual Private Workato (VPW)
A dedicated, single-tenant instance of the Workato platform hosted in a private cloud environment, isolated from other Workato customers.
Best for: Network isolation at the platform level
Virtual Private Workato gives enterprises a fully dedicated Workato environment — their own isolated compute, storage, and networking — while still benefiting from Workato-managed infrastructure and continuous platform updates. Unlike the shared multi-tenant cloud, VPW ensures that no other customer’s workloads share the same underlying resources.
This is the deployment of choice for organizations in highly regulated industries — financial services firms, healthcare networks, or defense contractors — who need their integration platform to be isolated. It also appeals to large enterprises whose compliance teams require dedicated infrastructure for audit and data governance purposes.
VPW eliminates the management burden of self-hosted infrastructure while delivering the isolation guarantees that enterprise security teams demand. You get the full Workato feature set without the shared-tenancy concerns of the standard cloud deployment.
02 — Private Link
A network connectivity model that allows Workato to communicate with customer-hosted systems over a private network path — without traffic ever traversing the public internet.
Best for: Secure connectivity to private systems
Private Link uses cloud provider networking constructs to establish a direct, private connection between the Workato cloud platform and resources that live inside a customer’s Virtual Private Cloud (VPC) or private network segment. Traffic between Workato and the target system remains on the cloud backbone and never touches the public internet.
This is ideal for organizations that want to keep Workato running in the managed cloud but need to connect to databases, APIs, or microservices that are intentionally not publicly exposed. Common scenarios include integrating with an internal ERP system, a privately-hosted data warehouse, or an on-premises application — all without opening inbound firewall rules or exposing endpoints publicly.
Private Link strikes the balance between operational simplicity and network security. Organizations avoid the overhead of managing their own Workato infrastructure while still satisfying network architecture requirements that prohibit public-internet connectivity to internal systems.
03 — Private instance in customer data center
A fully customer-hosted deployment of the Workato platform running on infrastructure owned and operated by the customer, within their own data center or private cloud environment.
Best for: Full data sovereignty and infrastructure control
For organizations that require complete control over every layer of the stack — compute, storage, networking, and the application itself — Workato can be deployed as a private instance within the customer’s own data center or private cloud. This means the Workato platform, including all recipe execution engines and metadata, runs entirely on customer-owned infrastructure.
This deployment model is the right fit for organizations with strict data sovereignty requirements that mandate all data processing occur within specific geographic borders. It’s also the go-to option for heavily regulated sectors such as national government agencies, central banks, or defense organizations where third-party-managed infrastructure is simply not permitted — even if it is logically isolated.
While this option carries the highest operational overhead — the customer is responsible for infrastructure provisioning, patching, and availability — it provides the strongest possible guarantees around data residency and platform ownership. Workato works closely with customers on this deployment path to ensure updates and platform capabilities are reliably delivered.
04 — On-Prem Agent (OPA)
A lightweight software agent installed on-premises that creates a secure tunnel between local systems and the Workato cloud platform
Best for: Connecting on-prem systems to the cloud
OPA is one of Workato’s most widely deployed hybrid connectivity tools. It is a lightweight, installable component that runs within the customer’s on-premises environment or private network and establishes a secure connection to the Workato cloud platform. Because the connection is initiated from inside the firewall, no inbound ports need to be opened — a common requirement from enterprise security teams.
The agent acts as a secure bridge, allowing Workato recipes running in the cloud to interact with systems that are locked behind corporate firewalls: ERP instances, legacy databases, file servers, or mainframes. The agent handles the connectivity and passes only what is needed to complete the integration task.
This model is particularly powerful for hybrid IT environments where cloud adoption is underway but significant on-premises infrastructure still exists. Organizations can accelerate digital transformation without waiting for every system to be cloud-ready — the agent brings the cloud platform to the on-premises application rather than the other way around.
05 — Edge Gateway in the API platform
A deployable API gateway component of Workato’s API Platform that executes API policy enforcement — authentication, rate limiting, routing, and schema validation — at the network edge, closer to the consumer or on-premises systems.
Best for: Low-latency API management at the edge or on-premises
Workato’s API Platform allows teams to expose integrations and workflows as managed APIs. The Edge Gateway extends this capability by allowing the API gateway layer itself to be deployed at a network edge location — whether that is a regional data center closer to the end customer, a factory floor, a retail location, or a ship overseas.
Rather than requiring all API traffic to traverse through a centralized cloud gateway — which adds latency and creates a potential chokepoint — the Edge Gateway processes requests locally. Authentication, authorization, rate limiting all happen at the edge, with only the necessary traffic forwarded to backend systems or the Workato cloud.
This is the deployment model for industries where milliseconds matter or where network reliability cannot be guaranteed. An automotive manufacturer running real-time quality control APIs on a production line, a retail chain enforcing API policies at point-of-sale terminals, or a logistics company managing tracking APIs across geographically distributed warehouses — all benefit from the reduced latency and improved resilience that edge-deployed API gateways provide. The Edge Gateway also helps satisfy data residency requirements by keeping API traffic processing within specific geographic or network boundaries.
The right deployment for every environment
Workato’s deployment flexibility is a direct response to the reality of enterprise IT. Cloud-first doesn’t mean cloud-only — and the organizations that move fastest are the ones whose integration platform can meet them wherever their data and systems live.
Whether you need the full isolation of a virtual private environment, the secure connectivity of a Private Link, the sovereignty guarantees of a customer-hosted instance, the hybrid reach of an on-premises agent, or the performance of an edge-deployed API gateway, Workato provides a deployment path that fits. The platform capabilities remain consistent across all deployment models — the same recipes, connectors, AI features, and governance tools — so teams can automate with confidence regardless of where the platform runs.
The cloud is where Workato thrives. But the edge is where Workato extends.
Learn more in the documentation, or contact your account team to discuss whether the Edge Gateway is the right fit for your organization.