Anyone using these products has no choice, so, I would say that these products having any API at all that can cobble together automation is a huge blessing.

We have wrapper functions that allow us to automate all the painful interactions with atlassian software. None of them are clever in any way; they're rote. But without them, we weren't using the services fully, which is sophomoric since we don't have freedom to use other services.

I can't defend the slowness though!