Verticalization of horizontal platforms

I the 90s, EAI was very hot. EAI stands for Enterprise Application Integration. The EAI platforms like Vitria, BEA, Crossworlds, TIBCO and others were very hot. But slower and slower, the market showed that selling horizontal platforms is much more difficult than selling vertical solutions. I always use the similarity with selling a house. When you sell a house, you sell the “livability”,??not the foundation with pipes, and wires. But of course for the owner, is important to have a great infrastructure that is functioning properly and is easy to maintain.

Most of these companies were acquired by vertical solution providers.

Now we are dealing with a similar situation with the Automation Platforms.

UiPath professional services develops vertical solutions, but through partners like #qBotica the business solutions cover more ground.

In my opinion, what #qBotica does for RPA is something great. For a platform company is very difficult to start specializing in verticals. This creates a whole difficulty of “productizing “ the professional services , because this is what you need to do. To develop solutions for verticals and start productizing it with frameworks and accelerators. UiPath does this also but cannot cover all the verticals .

#qBotica specializes in two verticals , healthcare and logistics. What they do is create a business layer, that is above the horizontal automation platform, in this case UiPath. See the image below.

This layer is the last layer that interacts with the customer’s enterprise applications and users. But many times, is a passthrough to the underlying UiPath services, like Document Understanding, AI Center, Action Center.?

#qBotica does the implementation work, insure the implementation of upgrades, insures the compliance with the vertical's standards etc.

The result is a great win win partnerships, a typical example of 1+ 1 > 2.

In my opinion, this is a brilliant model for System Integrator partners to sell solutions, by licensing their business layer and hiding the licenses of the automation platform below. The specialization in verticals of the SIs, allows them to create reusable solutions for many customers for their verticals. They resell the UiPath licenses , hidden under the license of their software layer.

Come and see the presentation of this solution at Forward, on Thursday September 29, 4 PM at Forward in Las Vegas.