Contents
- Changes in the RPA Magic Quadrant (July 2019)
- Where is the market moving?
- Strengths/Weaknesses of the 3 Leaders (UiPath, Blue Prism, Automation Anywhere)
- Conclusion and Outlook
What does that mean?
According to Gartner, the importance of Robotic Process Automation (RPA) is steadily increasing.
With 17 vendors, the Magic Quadrant is already quite crowded (see Test Automation) and will soon become even more so. This is because Tricentis and Microfocus , have recently launched RPA products.
But is it all just hype?
Currently, one might think so, as the RPA market is relatively small with $850 million in global revenue. However, its leader, UIPath, alone is valued at over $7 billion according to Crunchbase ! RPA is also currently the fastest-growing software sub-segment (+63% in 2018).
But what exactly has happened in the Magic Quadrant? What are the Leaders, the Challengers, and the Visionaries doing?
Automation Anywhere
Automation Anywhere is in the Leaders quadrant and focuses exclusively on the RPA market. They have a strong partner network and 1,200 employees based in San Jose, California.
Strengthen
Weaken
innovation
Primarily driven by their partners, who contribute extensions to the Bot Store.
marketing
Criticisms include a lack of price transparency and questions about the product's future development.
product
The integration capabilities are highlighted, for example via IBM BPM tooling.
The scalable architecture is also mentioned.
product
The system requires a large number of components – each with its own specific configuration. Improvements are expected with the new release.
Customer Experience
Many successful customer integrations (approx. 1600), including major customers.
Customer Experience
Customers complain about the support and the lack of product dashboards. More online training would also be desirable.
Blue Prism
Blue Prism is located in the Leader quadrant and is headquartered in Warrington (UK) with nearly 500 employees. Half of the employees work in business development and sales.
Strengthen
Weaken
marketing
Blue Prism shines through its strong implementations, driven by its consulting partner ecosystem.
Sales
Compared to the other leaders, Blue Prism is weaker here and relies heavily on its consulting partners.
product
Blue Prism focuses on the needs of IT departments that want to scale RPA initiatives. This is supported by Blue Prism's graphical, Visio-based development environment.
product
Blue Prism focuses on unattended/uninterruptible automation. This is generally a welcome approach, but it requires additional products like Appian, Bizagi, or TrustPortal.
Vertical/Industrial Strategy
Blue Prism is particularly strong in its breadth, meaning they have over 42 industry solutions with approximately 10 customers each.
Customer Experience
Customers criticize the central monitoring functions (the Control Room). Generally, there is still room for improvement in the enterprise-level area.
UiPath
UiPath is a leader in the Leaders quadrant. Strong implementation partners, active investors, focused brand initiatives, and a loyal customer base characterize this company. Its headquarters are in New York. UiPath employs approximately 1,900 people worldwide.
Strengthen
Weaken
marketing
UiPath has a well-structured partner ecosystem with over 100 technology partners. It offers numerous integrations covering BPM, process mining, and AI. UiPath currently operates in over 19 countries. Customers confirm its strong product performance, financial stability, and clear product roadmap.
Offering strategy
UiPath currently has no cloud-related offerings. However, this gap is expected to be closed later this year.
product
The RPA platform offers an intuitive user experience for business users and developers. Security features, robustness, and integrations are rated as relatively strong.
product
UiPath strives to develop a user-friendly tool. Nevertheless, some users have reported problems using the orchestrator and dashboards. Low-code/no-code options are not always available.
Customer Experience
Customers highlight the strong integration capabilities and stability. The UiPath Academy, the forum, and the Slack community are also praised. For example, 30,000 active users have built over 200 reusable components.
Customer Experience
According to various users, there is still a lot that could be done in the field of AI.
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Conclusion
As you can see, there's a lot of movement in this market. The leaders have a clear advantage, but still have considerable room for improvement. Big names like SAP will soon enter the market, and automation specialists like Tricentis also have a say.
Not to be forgotten is the "maintenance hurdle," which is explicitly mentioned. This means that in this area, too, it is important to design the robots effectively so that the manual tasks saved are not soon consumed by robot maintenance.
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