We’ve seen quite a lot of pattern traces transferring all through 2020 and into 2021 round automation, workflow, robotic course of automation (RPA) and the motion to low-code and no-code software constructing. While all of those applied sciences can work on their very own, they’re deeply linked and we’re beginning to see some motion in direction of bringing them collectively.
While the definition of course of automation is open to interpretation, and will embody issues like industrial automation, Statista estimates that the method automation market may very well be price $74 billion in 2021. Those are numbers which are going to get the eye of each buyers and enterprise software program executives.
Just this week, Berlin-based Camunda introduced a $98 million Series B to assist act as a layer to orchestrate the move of information between RPA bots, microservices and human staff. Meanwhile UIPath, the pure-play RPA startup that’s going to IPO any minute now, acquired Cloud Elements, giving it a strategy to transfer past RPA into API automation.
Not sufficient proof for you? How about ServiceNow asserting this week that it’s shopping for Indian startup Intellibot to provide it — you guessed it — RPA capabilities. That acquisition is a part of a broader technique by the corporate to maneuver into full-scale workflow and automation, which it mentioned simply a few weeks in the past.
Meanwhile on the finish of final yr, SAP purchased a special Berlin course of automation startup, Signavio, for $1.2 billion after asserting new automated workflow instruments and an RPA device at the start of December. Microsoft is in on it too, having acquired course of automation startup Softmotive final May, which it then mixed with its personal automation device PowerAutomate.
What we’ve here’s a frothy mixture of startups and enormous firms racing to offer a complete spectrum of workflow automation instruments to empower firms to spin up workflows shortly and transfer work involving each human and machine labor by means of a company.
The result’s sizzling startups getting prodigious funding, whereas different startups are exiting by way of acquisition to those bigger firms trying to purchase as a substitute of construct to realize a fast foothold on this market.
Cathy Tornbohm, Distinguished Research Vice President at Gartner, says a part of the explanation for the quickly rising curiosity is that these firms have stayed on the sidelines up till now, however they see a possibility and are utilizing their checkbooks to play catch up.
“IBM, SAP, Pega, Appian, Microsoft, ServiceNow all bought into the RPA market because for years they didn’t focus on how data got into their systems when operating between organizations or without a human. [Instead] they focused more on what happens inside the client’s organization. The drive to be digitally more efficient necessitates optimizing data ingestion and data flows,” Tornbohm advised me.
For all of the bluster from the large distributors, they don’t management the pure-play RPA market. In reality, Gartner discovered that the highest three gamers on this house are UIPath, Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism.
But Tornbohm says that, whilst the standard enterprise distributors attempt to push their means into the house, these pure-play firms usually are not sitting nonetheless. They are increasing past their RPA roots into the broader automation house, which might clarify why UIPath got here up from its pre-IPO quiet interval to make the Cloud Elements announcement this week.
Dharmesh Thakker, managing companion at Battery Ventures, agrees with Tornbohm, saying that the shift to the cloud, accelerated by COVID-19, has led to an enlargement of what RPA distributors are doing.
“RPA has historically centered on automation-UI move and person steps, however we consider a full automation suite requires that means to automate processes throughout the stack. For bigger firms, we see their curiosity within the class as a strategy to take motion on information inside their techniques. And for standalone RPA distributors, we see this as validation of the class and an invite to increase their…
