More AI, more Automation and more Innovation !

In today's digital era, companies are looking for new ways to create new business models, deliver new services and lower costs. The need to drive this transformation is even greater now given the uncertainties of COVID-19. What we observe in Middle East and Africa is that many companies are trying to innovate and leaders who may have been slow to adopt automation technologies are already planning to accelerate their automation strategies by implementing Robotic Process Automation (RPA), artificial intelligence (AI), and machine learning (ML). In the Gulf’s retail sector for example, according to Zawya [1] digital transformation, data and robotics will drive the post-COVID-19 recovery following a drastic shift towards online shopping following the global pandemic. IDC also predicts that by 2025, AI-powered enterprises will see a 100% increase in knowledge worker productivity, resulting in shorter reaction times, greater product innovation success and improved customer satisfaction [2].

IBM’s acquisition of WDG Automation took place earlier this month on July 8th, 2020. WDG Automation was founded in 2014 in Sao Paulo, Brazil and they are a well-known RPA vendor especially in Brazil/LATAM region. WDG Automation is focused primarily on attended RPA and customer experience automation, provides chatbots, interactive voice response, and other AI tools along with RPA. Interestingly, the company also has Click-Mining, which provides task mining capabilities by helping prioritize RPA deployments with their pre-built scripts.

The acquisition comes in a time when market’s biggest players are seeing huge demand for their robotic process automation (RPA) software. To name a few, Softomotive (acquired by Microsoft in May 2020), Jidoka (acquired by Appian in Jan 2020), Foxtrot (acquired by Nintex in Mar 2019), or even Contextor (acquired by SAP earlier in 2018). It is no wonder that this segment is expected to see continued strong growth in the coming years. Wikibon research estimating that the total addressable market expansion opportunity for the RPA segment could exceed $30 billion. If you expand the definition beyond RPA software into the broader automation opportunities, this market is much larger – perhaps well over a $100 billion opportunity as AI powered automation becomes a fundamental part of every organization’s operating model [3].

IBM Offers Complete AI-Infused Automation Capabilities – Spanning Business Process to IT Operations

By embedding WDG Automation's RPA capabilities into IBM's existing AI-infused automation capabilities across business processes and IT operations, business leaders including Chief Operating Officers (COOs) and Chief Information Officers (CIOs) will have broader access to intelligent automation through software robots. According to Gartner, by 2022, 65% of organizations that deployed robotic process automation will introduce artificial intelligence, including machine learning and natural language processing algorithms [4].

The acquisition will extend IBM Services' ability to transform clients' operations as RPA, analytics and AI. This will bring more intelligence to the enterprise workflows that fuel adaptive and resilient businesses and help to expand IBM's capabilities of the IBM Cloud Pak offerings on Red Hat OpenShift, starting with Cloud Pak for Automation. As part of the acquisition, IBM will integrate over 600 pre-built RPA functions from WDG Automation into Cloud Pak for Automation available on any public or private cloud, or on-premises to help businesses turn insights from AI into automated actions. Organizations including Banco Galicia, ENN Group in China, PNC Bank throughout the United States, several government entities in the Middle East, and UK NHS Blood and Transplant, already are using IBM Cloud Pak for Automation capabilities to digitize and automate work.

In addition to business operations, IBM plans to integrate WDG Automation RPA into its capabilities for automating IT operations, specifically Watson AIOps and Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management. With these capabilities CIOs and CTOs will be able to self-detect, diagnose, and respond to IT anomalies in real time. IT users will be able to intelligently automate IT tasks for efficiency and make their IT processes and infrastructures more resilient to future disruptions. Staff will have more time to deliver new features and fix problems for good.

In line with IBM's acquisitions, including Red Hat just over a year ago, that of WDG Automation is another strategic investment into our clients' journey to cloud in this digital era, keeping pace with organizations' needs to transform, helping them with AI-infused automation solutions for improved productivity and efficiency across business and IT operations.

Learn more how to build operational resiliency with a powerful, highly scalable automation platform by visiting our website.

Sources:

[1] https://www.zawya.com

[2] IDC White Paper, sponsored by IBM. "Architect Business Transformation with AI and Hybrid Multicloud." Copyright 2020

[3] https://wikibon.com

[4] https://www.gartner.com