>> Narrator: From theCUBE's studios in Palo Alto, in Boston, connecting with thought leaders all around the world. This is a CUBE conversation. >> Hey everybody, this is Dave Vellante and welcome to this episode of "CXO Insights." As you know, we've been grabbing the perspectives of leaders throughout this pandemic and assessing their tips for managing in a crisis and of course, managing in good times as well. But now, as we enter the post-isolation economy, we really want to look at not just how you manage through the crisis but how you manage beyond the crisis. And I'm really excited to have Chris Riley here. He's the newly minted Chief Revenue Officer at Automation Anywhere. Chris, my friend, how you doing? I hope you and the family are well. >> Thank you, David. I wish the same for you. I think getting by as most folks are, it's the new normal, we're all getting used to it but I'm happy to be here and happy to be at Automation Anywhere. >> Yeah, I want to talk about that in detail. Eddie Walsh calls it the new abnormal but so congratulations on the new role. I want to start with your career. I met you in 1987, which ironically was the same year I met Dave Donatelli, the same year I met Michigan I. and Saul Koi, talk about great timing. And then, you came into the industry at a time, really different time. It was, the IBM people don't remember this but IBM was the dominant player and you guys unseated them amazing 12-year career at EMC and then you kind of went to the .com boom. That was amazing. You relive that ride, did a stint at HP and really turned that business around and then came back to Dell, top go to market executive. One of the top in the industry that I know and now, of course at Automation Anywhere we're going to talk about. My first question to you is, a lot of changes have occurred since 1987. What has changed the most? Now we're talking diversity, we're talking all kinds of your different sales models. From your career looking back, what's changed the most? >> I think everything has changed and candidly for the better, Dave. You just led with one of the key areas in an area I'm deeply passionate about and that is diversity and inclusion and I think there's no stronger time, at least in our country's history where the inequalities that exist have been so exposed. So I view this as an opportunity, as I did at Dell to make a difference, lead from the front and make this a destination and a company whose culture really supports and drives diversity and inclusion. So I'd say that's one area, and I know it's very passionate for you as well. The others, it was a time before laptops, desktops. I think Ken Olsen once said, who would ever need a laptop in their home and boy, the world has changed. So I think some of the things though that haven't changed and this is why I'm so excited about Automation Anywhere. At the manual processes we have our workers doing and I think there is a real opportunity. I've lived through explosive growth at EMC, top company performing stock during the 90s, I get to see VMware firsthand. I've seen what's happened with ServiceNow and I believe this RPA space, as to you is in its infancy. It's seeing 30% compounded annual growth and we're just at the beginning and I think it's going to change the way people work and really lead to that digital transformation that so many of us have been talking about for the last decade. >> Yeah and you know kind of my position. Quick aside, I don't know if you saw the Netflix announcement this morning and I've been wondering as a small business, what can we do? What more can we do for inclusion and diversity? Netflix announced they're going to take 2% of their cash and put it into banks, financial institutions that support black causes and I just talked to our CFO. I said, look, why don't we take some of our cash, let's take 2% and stick it into banks, community banks. There's 30 million small businesses in the United States. If just 1% puts 10 grand in each, that's $3 billion that go into black community. So I'm going to start a mission and I just thought I'd share that 'cause I know it's a passion of yours. >> Yeah, and we all need to be in a position to provide equal opportunity for employment and that is reaching out into those communities and starting early on in creating the opportunities for advancement professionally, mentorship and just the path forward. And I'm excited to see what Netflix is doing. I'm sure you'll come up with the right answer for your company and I think all of us are searching, what's the right answer for our respective companies? >> Yeah, so now let's get into it. You're a month in and I want to talk about this project. I've learned a lot about not only RPA but about automation. I've just had a deep dive with your team and it really brought some things into focus. Guys, if you bring up the first slide, I want to get some thoughts on the table here. So this is a chart that sort of came into my focus with a friend of mine, Dave Moschello, who really big thinker on this stuff and he pointed out, this is data from the US Bureau of Labor and Statistics and the EU and it shows the lackluster productivity that's going on in the past decade. So you can see, we had the boost in the 80s and the 90s, we had this sort of productivity uptick from laptops but now, look what's happened since 2007. And the point that Moschello made on the right hand side is we have all these huge issues that we face, whether it's climate change, we have this massive debt, healthcare, an aging population, feeding everyone, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera, and his point was, there's no way we're going to be able to solve all these problems by throwing humans at the problem. So I've really begun to sort of think about this just in terms of machines and the roles that machines will play. I think overnight, Chris, we've gone from, wow, I'm afraid that machines are going to take my job to you can't operate if you're not digital. >> Yeah, well digital transformation is not a new term. I think it's meant something different each year for the last 10 years and I look at this as an opportunity. The World Economic Forum projected that IA and RPA will create 58 million new jobs. It's an astounding number. What COVID-19 has exposed is this work from home phenomenon that really exposes the risk of manual processes within the enterprise. So I think those two things combined is almost a perfect storm and I think what it'll do is accelerate the adoption of RPA and IPA. So something that might've taken years or decades to really be adopted in force, in this new normal, I think is going to be accelerated quite dramatically. >> So, the combination of your go to market execution, you managed complex sales motions before. Automation Anywhere obviously has some great product capabilities. Guys, I want to bring up the next slide and Chris, you might have seen this in some of the stuff that I wrote but this is data from ETR Enterprise technology research. They're a data partner of ours. Now it's clear that Automation Anywhere has the right product market fit and you can see on this chart, this is a methodology that we use. ETR goes out and they ask people, are you adopting a platform new? Are you increasing spending relative to last year? Are you flat, decreasing or replacing? And you can see here, there is zero churn in the Automation Anywhere base. And so obviously you got product market fit. Churn is the silent killer, obviously of SAS companies and so, you've picked a winner and I'm learning more about this. At first I thought the team office is quite large, I sized it. I actually think it's bigger than I originally thought. Chris, I thought this was going to be a winner-take-all type of market. I'm really rethinking that after, especially the deep dive I've had with your team in terms of how you guys go to market with an end-to-end sort of life cycle approach as opposed to sort of putting point products in. So I wonder if that narrative that I just laid out, resonates with you, is it sort of consistent with what you're seeing and then maybe some of the reasons why you joined Automation Anywhere? >> Yeah, I would say the most aggressive software growth that I've seen in the last decade or so, and two companies stand out for me. That's VMware and ServiceNow. They don't have a point product, they have a platform and that's what attracted me to Automation Anywhere is this platform approach. And Dave as you know, I've spent most of my career calling on the enterprise' strong relationships with those types of companies and they aren't looking to develop a point product solution and then cobble together lots of disparate islands of solutions. They're looking for a platform that can grow as they grow. They can extend from the back office to the front office but all centered around workforce, transformation, productivity and just as importantly, resiliency. And as we start to develop more and more capabilities that will be delivered through this platform approach, I think we're going to see explosive growth as the industry goes through its explosive growth. >> Well, I know your approach and your approach is to stay very close to customers. So as you were doing your due diligence on Automation Anywhere and as you enter your sort of first part of your 100-day journey here, I'm sure you've talked to a lot of customers. What are they telling you? What are the big takeaways right now that you're hearing? >> Yeah, so I think some of the data you pointed out with 4,000 customers in essence, zero churn, the opportunity to upsell those customers with more products and solutions clearly is there. New account acquisition has been a tremendous source of growth for the company in a strong professional services organization that actually is able to deliver the outcomes that our customers expect. From an enterprise perspective, I couldn't have come into a better situation with 4,000 customers, 50% of the fortune 500, 2 million bots deployed, those types of strategic relationships are going to be more and more critical as this company continues to accelerate its growth. Most of the RPA solutions really got in through the back office and candidly, really weren't even a component of an IT solution. Now, as you go to the front of the house, where you're looking at customer facing applications and worker productivity, these are CEO, CFO, COO and IT initiatives. So I really believe we're coming into our own, at the front of the house with senior executives that really want to create a better working environment for their employees and de-risk a lot of these manual processes that have existed for years. >> So I know why you chose Automation Anywhere. My question is, why did Automation Anywhere choose Chris Riley? I know your capabilities but obviously when somebody hires a executive like yourself, they say, "Hey, Chris, we want you to help us "get to the next level," but what does that mean? Are we talking about changes in the go to market? Are we talking about your ability to recruit and coach, to manage complex of sales motions? What is it that you want to bring to Automation Anywhere? >> I think it's all those, Dave. Having built a reputation throughout my 30 plus year career around a people-centric focus, a customer-centric focus and those two things kind of aren't interchangeable. When you look at customers, they put their faith and confidence in people and they put their faith and confidence in companies. And what I see here at Automation Anywhere is that the ability to kind of expand upon the great culture that the company already has but do it with someone whose role in a company at scale globally and can put a lot of the best practices and disciplines in place to do that 'cause it is difficult but also, how do we start to do larger, more complex deals and build relationships with the CIO, the CFO, the CEO? And I think a big reason why I'm here is, that experience in doing that, doing large complex multi-year opportunities but also being able to deliver upon the outcomes that we told our customers we could achieve and do that together with our customers and again we have a strong professional services organization and an incredible ecosystem of partners that have demonstrated year over year, the company's ability to actually deliver upon its promise. >> That was my next question to you, was the ecosystem. One of the big changes from when you started in this business, was it used to be just belly to belly, hardcore, direct sales, the importance and leverage that you get from a partner ecosystem. You point out VMware. In fact ServiceNow, it's interesting. When we first started covering ServiceNow, one of the things we said is we want to see as an indicator of success, the partner ecosystem evolve and then sure enough, it exploded with the SIs and all the kinds of developers. So maybe talk about AA's ecosystem, The Partner System. You obviously have a lot of experience there in your career, how do you see that as a leverage point? >> Yeah, it's huge. This market is far larger than we can cover with a direct sales organization and requires substantial services engagements that go well beyond the kind of professional services organization we want to build out organically in the company. So when you look at that, the company today has 1,900 partners. The global systems integrators are key, especially those with VPO type practices, the regional SIs and candidly, the regional VARs who've built out a strong service malpractice, a strong VMware practice and have the professional services capabilities to do some of these complex automation or automation type work that have also built the trust and confidence of their customers. So, in partnership with these types of companies, we believe we can expand our reach. We believe we can offer a more comprehensive outcome and solution to our customers and we, what I'm going to be looking at is, how do we enhance our channel programs to be the kind of company that the channel partners want to engage with, built upon the reputation of the company, the leadership position we have in the technology and also our willingness to go after this space together. >> So I got to go but last question is, what can you share with us about your 100-day plan? Where are you going to focus? >> On the people. There is a strong culture here, there's incredible sales talent and there's talent throughout the organization. I think Dave, you've seen for me over the years, a clarity of our mission, keep things simple and try and drive a repetitive process to deliver results. I'm very accountability focused. So I think what I'm going to look to assess is where the organization is today, how to get more out of the great talent we have, build stronger and deeper relationships with our customers and really scale and grow through our ecosystem of channel partners. >> Well, Chris, I'm super excited for you. A great hire by Automation Anywhere obviously got my attention. I think it'll get the industry's as well. Best of luck, and of course we'll be watching. >> Good, always great to see you, Dave, take care. >> Yeah, ditto, thanks so much for coming on and thank you for watching everybody. Keep it here because this month we're going to be really digging into the ETR data we've been reporting on that horse race between Automation Anywhere and UI Path. The ETR data is in the field and we'll be reporting on that. So look for that. This is Dave Vellante for theCUBE and we'll see you next time. (gentle music)

(upbeat music) >> Hi, and welcome to theCUBE, the leading source for insights into the world of technology and innovation. I'm your host, Donald Klein and today's topic is the exploding software segment of Robotic Process Automation, where Automation Anywhere is one of the leading providers. To have that conversation today, I'm joined by Riadh Dridi, CMO of Automation Anywhere. Welcome to the show, Riadh. >> Thank you for having me. >> Great, okay so, look, you're relatively new to Automation Anywhere, is that correct? >> Yes, I've been there for about six months now. >> Excellent, so why don't you talk a little bit about your background and how you came to the world of RPA. >> Yes, so I've been in the IT industry for about 20 years, been in the hardware space and the software space and the cloud space more recently, so when I heard about Automation Anywhere in the RPA space, did my due diligence and find out how fast this technology was catching on in enterprises, I got really, really excited and then met the management team and then get even more excited and ended up, you know, taking the job. >> Well, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> It's an exploding segment, for sure. Why don't you talk to us a little bit about what you see happening in this market and how fast it's growing. >> Yeah, so there are many studies out there, and of course we have our own internal data, but the market right now, according to Gartner is growing about 63% year over year, is the fastest growing enterprise software market in the industry right now and is projected to continue to grow at that pace for the foreseeable future. >> Okay, and let's talk about, sort of for people who are not that familiar with RPA. It's obviously an acronym that's being, you know, tossed around a lot but, you know, talk to us about Robotic Process Automation and how you define that category. >> Right, so that was one of the challenges early on is to try to put the label on this segment, which is really about automating processes end-to-end as much as possible, and so the RPA category is where, you know, some of the analysts decided to focus on, and so what it does is really allow businesses to deploy software robots to business processes so that process can be handled by bots instead of humans. The mundane, repetitive tasks that humans do as part of the end-to-end process, whether it's a order to cash process or procure to pay process, any, frankly, business process that things, that humans should not be doing, should be better suited to do more creative work. That's when, you know, bots came into play and the whole category was named, Robotic Process Automation because the robots are taking the place of the humans, in that terms of process automation. >> Got it, okay, so (mumbles) of the bots, so creating bots, right, and what's kind of fascinating about this world is that, you know, for customers that deploy this type of solution, right, they're growing a whole library of bots, right (mumbles). Maybe just walk us through an example bot and what a bot does and why this technology is so unique. >> Right, so think about, first of all, the problem that those bots are solving, right? So today you have ERP applications, CRM applications, any sort of applications in businesses to really automate a process, like I said an order to cash process, procure to pay process. That's why people have bought the technology, but what the industry has realized is after twenty years or more of using the same technology, humans were still doing part of the process that should have been automated by the software. So when you look at the average enterprises, only 20% of the steps that should be automated are automated, 80% of it is done by humans, whether it's opening files, reading documents, cutting and pasting, filling out forms, you know, playing with excel and kind of loading data into systems, data entry, a lot of it is still done by humans. So what the bots do is go in and take that work away from the humans so they can really focus on better tasks. That's really what it is. >> And so, just so everybody's kind of clear, so what's really so intelligent about these capabilities, right, take something sort of like invoices, right? Any company, you know, receiving lots and lots of invoices, all these invoices are going to be formatted in different ways. >> Right. >> Correct? >> Right. >> And historically it's been up to a human to kind of look through that invoice, pull out the relevant pieces of information, right, and enter that into the system so that the system can then issue the PO or pay the PO, et cetera, right? >> Exactly. >> But what your bots can do, or what the space as a whole, right, is they can intelligently scan these documents, and look for the kind of pieces of information, and actually load those into the system, correct? >> That's exactly right. So what the bots are doing now with computer vision, they're able to look into applications, they're able to assess the data, they're able to assess the information from that data and then process it like humans would do. So they're able to, again, get in, look at invoices or any type of, frankly, unstructured data or semi-structured data, and take that data, analyze it, and then manipulate it like a human would do. >> Excellent. >> An exception is that they are, obviously, doing it 24/7, much faster, with less errors. >> Got it, right. So you're turning people who, previously may have been focused on kind of a data entry task, right, into kind of managing a process, right? >> Exactly. So basically, what we like to say is we are taking the robot out of humans and then giving it to the robots, who are supposed to be doing the work. >> Excellent. >> And that's kind of phase one, and then phase two is obviously making those robots more intelligent, so that they're not able to do the simplest of simplest tasks, but start to be a little bit more intelligent and use AI to do things that are a little bit more advanced and more complicated. >> Okay, excellent. So look, you guys have got some news, right? >> Yup. >> You've kind of just come out with a big new release of your platform. Why don't you just kind of talk us through what the news is and what you guys have released? >> Yeah, so if you think about what the space has done so far, is taking a process, that's usually a known process, like I said, an order to cash, or even a simpler process, right? And taking look at the different steps and tasks that people have to do, and say, let's now automate those tasks and that particular process. A lot of the time is spent on trying to figure out their process. I don't know about your company, but I know in a lot of companies that I've been at, a lot of processes are not documented. So what we've announced yesterday is a bot, we call this Discovery Bot, that allows us to discover the processes that people work with. So if you're, again, an agent or a knowledge worker in an organization, you're going through a certain number of steps. The bot is going to basically analyze all those different steps, map the process, allows you to understand the flow that you're going through, and let you know that if you automate those repetitive tasks within your process, you're going to be able to save a certain amount of time and energy and have a better process in place. And then the cool thing about what we announced yesterday, and this is unique in the industry today, is the ability to create bots automatically from analyzing that process. So again, the industry has matured into analyzing processes manually, or using certain tools, but then the work had to be done by a different platform to basically create the bots from these processes. We're the only provider today that can analyze processes with the tool, and then create the bots automatically, shrinking the time for process automation end-to-end. >> Fantastic. >> Okay, and now, but also part of this release, too, right, is your kind of cloud capabilities. You've really kind of ramped up your ability to scale for the kind of largest customers. Talk a little to us about how the application functions in the cloud, how it functions on-prem. How does that all work end-to-end? >> Right, so back in November we announced the new platform called Enterprise A2019. This was the first cloud native web-based platform in the industry. And the reason why cloud native is important is because it's what gives you the benefits, in terms of scaling, in terms of TCO, in terms of easy to use, and that platform is now the core platform for the company, and so the product announcement we had yesterday allows our customers to use the same platform, except now we add this Discovery Bot at the front-end to discover the process, prioritize them, and then use the platform we've announced to automate these processes. What's very interesting about the platform is that customers can use it on-prem, can use it in the cloud. The customers, obviously, that decide to use it in the cloud will have the ability to learn more from the platform because, you know, it's going to tackle a lot more data in the cloud. Then we're going to be able to use lots of data analysis tools to be able to get the customers to extract knowledge from it and then innovate a much faster way. The people who are going to be using it on-prem, typically, are regulated industries or customers who have systems of records that are, typically, on-prem and they would like the bots to run where the systems are. So the platform is available in the cloud. It's available on-prem. It's the customer's choice to decide how to use it, but the innovation that's backed into it is what's really exciting. >> So this is kind of, I think, a fundamental point, maybe people should understand, right? So what you're, this is kind of a brave new world, right? You're saying kind of cloud native app, right, which is now ready to be used on-prem, right? >> Right >> As opposed to maybe the older world where people develop applications that were primarily based for kind of a server architecture within the firewall, right? >> Exactly. >> And then they tried to migrate it to the cloud? >> Exactly. >> So in some sense, you've done the reverse. >> Exactly. So if you were to build an application today knowing, you know, microservices architecture, knowing Java, knowing web-based, that's how you would build it. And so the fact that you've built the architecture for a modern application and then offer the options to customers to use it, either on-prem or in the cloud, is what we've done. >> Got it, great. Okay, so then what's the advantage of being able to use, so you've got this application that can scale with microservices, right? It can handle the volume that a Fortune 500 company might need. What's the advantage for them being able to do it on-prem? What does that help? >> So for some customers, it's really about regulating industries. For example, if you're a bank, or if you're a healthcare institution, the data cannot travel through the cloud. So systems of records, whether it's a CRM, whether it's HRM with some other systems of records, an ERP, usually will be on-prem and the data can travel through the cloud. So for these customers, we're saying, use the product on-prem, you have the same benefit. It's still the cloud architecture, microservices-based. It's still web-based as far as the client interface is concerned. It's the lowest TCO you can get, but you don't have to worry about getting to the cloud if that's what you decide to do. >> So, in terms of enabling digital transformation, really the requirement here is to be able to enable that both in the cloud and on-prem and do it simultaneously. >> Correct, and again, some customers will do a hybrid of both and then say, for these workflows we'll have them in the cloud, for these we'll keep them on-prem. Some customers in regulated industries will say, we don't want to do anything in the cloud, we want everything on-prem. They'll have the choice to do that. >> Understood, okay, well look, final question here. Let's talk about kind of some of the upcoming events that Automation Anywhere has going on, right? You do events all across the globe, you're now a global company. Tell us what's happening on that front. >> Yeah, so we do lots of events, you know, cause our customers are global, where we have customers in 90 countries, we have offices in 45 countries, and so we have to go where our customers are. So we have four large conferences throughout the year, one upcoming in London, we have it in Vegas, in Tokyo, and in Bangalore, as well. And it's the largest gathering of RPA minds and experts in the industry today. So what's exciting about the one that's coming up is, obviously, Discovery Bot is going to be featured at that conference. People will be able to play with the product, they'll be able to understand, you know, the latest innovations from Automation Anywhere. We have sessions that are called Build a Bots where people will be able to build their bots on-site, and that's always a popular thing for people to do. And then we're going to have some amazing speakers and top leaders who will help customers understand, you know, what's happening in digital transformation, and how intelligent automation can accelerate that transformation. >> Okay, great, and so just to understand the timing of it, so you've got a show coming up in London in the very near future here, is that right? >> Yes, I believe it's in April and then we have another one in May in Las Vegas. >> Okay, so then the big one in North America is going to be Vegas this year? >> Correct, correct, it's in May. >> Okay, great. And then, what about the, so then you also talked about Bangalore, talk about -- >> Yeah, Bangalore, I don't have all the dates in my head, so I apologize, but I think Bangalore is, I believe, in August or September, and then Tokyo, I believe, it's in June, so I'll have to confirm all those dates -- >> But one of the unique things, right, is that Bangalore show has actually been one of your largest shows of the year. >> It's been amazing. So I literally missed that show by one week. When I joined the company, I was super excited about having the ability to go visit the customers and the partners within the show. I think last year they had 6000 people, so it's an amazing opportunity this year to go see it first-hand. I don't know what the audience is going to be like, I'm assuming it's going to be more than 6000, but feeling the energy and the excitement from attendees is what I'm really looking forward to. >> Well, that just shows, right, that the software industry, particularly cloud-enabled software industry, is now a global industry, right? >> It is, it is, absolutely, because again, cloud allows those barriers to entry for companies, wherever they are, to be lowered, and customers in different regions can have the latest, greatest directly from the cloud and they both use the product, you know, when it comes out, and so that's, obviously, a super big advantage. The other thing I should be (mumbles) if I didn't say, you know, because it's also available in the cloud, and it's web-based, it's easy to use, easy to access, a lot of our first-time customers are business users. They're not even IT people, so they just go in, start playing with the product, you know, automating a few processes, and then start to scale end-to-end, and then of course they build the COE, IT gets involved. So being able to start your automation journey as small, and then grow as you scale from any parts of the world is really what this opportunity gives us. >> Okay, well thank you for your time today, Riadh. I'm fascinated, everything you guys are doing. Super hot category for those folks out there that want to touch base with Automation Anywhere, shows in London, Vegas, Bangalore, and then where was the fourth one? >> I think Tokyo -- >> Tokyo. >> And then Bangalore after that, yes. >> Okay, fantastic. >> Yes. >> Thanks for joining us today. This is Donald Klein, I'm the host of theCUBE. I'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

(upbeat music) >> Hi, and welcome to theCUBE, the leading source for insights into the world of technology and innovation. I'm your host, Donald Klein and today's topic is the exploding software segment of Robotic Process Automation, where Automation Anywhere is one of the leading providers. To have that conversation today, I'm joined by Riadh Dridi, CMO of Automation Anywhere. Welcome to the show, Riadh. >> Thank you for having me. >> Great, okay so, look, you're relatively new to Automation Anywhere, is that correct? >> Yes, I've been there for about six months now. >> Excellent, so why don't you talk a little bit about your background and how you came to the world of RPA. >> Yes, so I've been in the IT industry for about 20 years, been in the hardware space and the software space and the cloud space more recently, so when I heard about Automation Anywhere in the RPA space, did my due diligence and find out how fast this technology was catching on in enterprises, I got really, really excited and then met the management team and then get even more excited and ended up, you know, taking the job. >> Well, congratulations. >> Thank you. >> It's an exploding segment, for sure. Why don't you talk to us a little bit about what you see happening in this market and how fast it's growing. >> Yeah, so there are many studies out there, and of course we have our own internal data, but the market right now, according to Gartner is growing about 63% year over year, is the fastest growing enterprise software market in the industry right now and is projected to continue to grow at that pace for the foreseeable future. >> Okay, and let's talk about, sort of for people who are not that familiar with RPA. It's obviously an acronym that's being, you know, tossed around a lot but, you know, talk to us about Robotic Process Automation and how you define that category. >> Right, so that was one of the challenges early on is to try to put the label on this segment, which is really about automating processes end-to-end as much as possible, and so the RPA category is where, you know, some of the analysts decided to focus on, and so what it does is really allow businesses to deploy software robots to business processes so that process can be handled by bots instead of humans. The mundane, repetitive tasks that humans do as part of the end-to-end process, whether it's a order to cash process or procure to pay process, any, frankly, business process that things, that humans should not be doing, should be better suited to do more creative work. That's when, you know, bots came into play and the whole category was named, Robotic Process Automation because the robots are taking the place of the humans, in that terms of process automation. >> Got it, okay, so everybody talked about the addition of the bots, so creating bots, right, and what's kind of fascinating about this world is that, you know, for customers that deploy this type of solution, right, they're growing a whole library of bots, right you're doing things. Maybe just walk us through an example bot and what a bot does and why this technology is so unique. >> Right, so think about, first of all, the problem that those bots are solving, right? So today you have ERP applications, CRM applications, any sort of applications in businesses to really automate a process, like I said an order to cash process, procure to pay process. That's why people have bought the technology, but what the industry has realized is after twenty years or more of using the same technology, humans were still doing part of the process that should have been automated by the software. So when you look at the average enterprises, only 20% of the steps that should be automated are automated, 80% of it is done by humans, whether it's opening files, reading documents, cutting and pasting, filling out forms, you know, playing with excel and kind of loading data into systems, data entry, a lot of it is still done by humans. So what the bots do is go in and take that work away from the humans so they can really focus on better tasks. That's really what it is. >> And so, just so everybody's kind of clear, so what's really so intelligent about these capabilities, right, take something sort of like invoices, right? Any company, you know, receiving lots and lots of invoices, all these invoices are going to be formatted in different ways. >> Right. >> Correct? >> Right. >> And historically it's been up to a human to kind of look through that invoice, pull out the relevant pieces of information, right, and enter that into the system so that the system can then issue the PO or pay the PO, et cetera, right? >> Exactly. >> But what your bots can do, or what the space as a whole, right, is they can intelligently scan these documents, and look for the kind of pieces of information, and actually load those into the system, correct? >> That's exactly right. So what the bots are doing now with computer vision, they're able to look into applications, they're able to assess the data, they're able to assess the information from that data and then process it like humans would do. So they're able to, again, get in, look at invoices or any type of, frankly, unstructured data or semi-structured data, and take that data, analyze it, and then manipulate it like a human would do. >> Excellent. >> An exception is that they are, obviously, doing it 24/7, much faster, with less errors. >> Got it, right. So you're turning people who, previously may have been focused on kind of a data entry task, right, into kind of managing a process, right? >> Exactly. So basically, what we like to say is we are taking the robot out of humans and then giving it to the robots, who are supposed to be doing the work. >> Excellent. >> And that's kind of phase one, and then phase two is obviously making those robots more intelligent, so that they're not able to do the simplest of simplest tasks, but start to be a little bit more intelligent and use AI to do things that are a little bit more advanced and more complicated. >> Okay, excellent. So look, you guys have got some news, right? >> Yup. >> You've kind of just come out with a big new release of your platform. Why don't you just kind of talk us through what the news is and what you guys have released? >> Yeah, so if you think about what the space has done so far, is taking a process, that's usually a known process, like I said, an order to cash, or even a simpler process, right? And taking look at the different steps and tasks that people have to do, and say, let's now automate those tasks and that particular process. A lot of the time is spent on trying to figure out their process. I don't know about your company, but I know in a lot of companies that I've been at, a lot of processes are not documented. So what we've announced yesterday is a bot, we call this Discovery Bot, that allows us to discover the processes that people work with. So if you're, again, an agent or a knowledge worker in an organization, you're going through a certain number of steps. The bot is going to basically analyze all those different steps, map the process, allows you to understand the flow that you're going through, and let you know that if you automate those repetitive tasks within your process, you're going to be able to save a certain amount of time and energy and have a better process in place. And then the cool thing about what we announced yesterday, and this is unique in the industry today, is the ability to create bots automatically from analyzing that process. So again, the industry has matured into analyzing processes manually, or using certain tools, but then the work had to be done by a different platform to basically create the bots from these processes. We're the only provider today that can analyze processes with the tool, and then create the bots automatically, shrinking the time for process automation end-to-end. >> Fantastic. >> Okay, and now, but also part of this release, too, right, is your kind of cloud capabilities. You've really kind of ramped up your ability to scale for the kind of largest customers. Talk a little to us about how the application functions in the cloud, how it functions on-prem. How does that all work end-to-end? >> Right, so back in November we announced the new platform called Enterprise A2019. This was the first cloud native web-based platform in the industry. And the reason why cloud native is important is because it's what gives you the benefits, in terms of scaling, in terms of TCO, in terms of easy to use, and that platform is now the core platform for the company, and so the product announcement we had yesterday allows our customers to use the same platform, except now we add this Discovery Bot at the front-end to discover the process, prioritize them, and then use the platform we've announced to automate these processes. What's very interesting about the platform is that customers can use it on-prem, can use it in the cloud. The customers, obviously, that decide to use it in the cloud will have the ability to learn more from the platform because, you know, it's going to tackle a lot more data in the cloud. Then we're going to be able to use lots of data analysis tools to be able to get the customers to extract knowledge from it and then innovate a much faster way. The people who are going to be using it on-prem, typically, are regulated industries or customers who have systems of records that are, typically, on-prem and they would like the bots to run where the systems are. So the platform is available in the cloud. It's available on-prem. It's the customer's choice to decide how to use it, but the innovation that's backed into it is what's really exciting. >> So this is kind of, I think, a fundamental point, maybe people should understand, right? So what you're, this is kind of a brave new world, right? You're saying kind of cloud native app, right, which is now ready to be used on-prem, right? >> Right >> As opposed to maybe the older world where people develop applications that were primarily based for kind of a server architecture within the firewall, right? >> Exactly. >> And then they tried to migrate it to the cloud? >> Exactly. >> So in some sense, you've done the reverse. >> Exactly. So if you were to build an application today knowing, you know, microservices architecture, knowing Java, knowing web-based, that's how you would build it. And so the fact that you've built the architecture for a modern application and then offer the options to customers to use it, either on-prem or in the cloud, is what we've done. >> Got it, great. Okay, so then what's the advantage of being able to use, so you've got this application that can scale with microservices, right? It can handle the volume that a Fortune 500 company might need. What's the advantage for them being able to do it on-prem? What does that help? >> So for some customers, it's really about regulating industries. For example, if you're a bank, or if you're a healthcare institution, the data cannot travel through the cloud. So systems of records, whether it's a CRM, whether it's HRM with some other systems of records, an ERP, usually will be on-prem and the data can travel through the cloud. So for these customers, we're saying, use the product on-prem, you have the same benefit. It's still the cloud architecture, microservices-based. It's still web-based as far as the client interface is concerned. It's the lowest TCO you can get, but you don't have to worry about getting to the cloud if that's what you decide to do. >> So, in terms of enabling digital transformation, really the requirement here is to be able to enable that both in the cloud and on-prem and do it simultaneously. >> Correct, and again, some customers will do a hybrid of both and then say, for these workflows we'll have them in the cloud, for these we'll keep them on-prem. Some customers in regulated industries will say, we don't want to do anything in the cloud, we want everything on-prem. They'll have the choice to do that. >> Understood, okay, well look, final question here. Let's talk about kind of some of the upcoming events that Automation Anywhere has going on, right? You do events all across the globe, you're now a global company. Tell us what's happening on that front. >> Yeah, so we do lots of events, you know, cause our customers are global, where we have customers in 90 countries, we have offices in 45 countries, and so we have to go where our customers are. So we have four large conferences throughout the year, one upcoming in London, we have it in Vegas, in Tokyo, and in Bangalore, as well. And it's the largest gathering of RPA minds and experts in the industry today. So what's exciting about the one that's coming up is, obviously, Discovery Bot is going to be featured at that conference. People will be able to play with the product, they'll be able to understand, you know, the latest innovations from Automation Anywhere. We have sessions that are called Build a Bots where people will be able to build their bots on-site, and that's always a popular thing for people to do. And then we're going to have some amazing speakers and top leaders who will help customers understand, you know, what's happening in digital transformation, and how intelligent automation can accelerate that transformation. >> Okay, great, and so just to understand the timing of it, so you've got a show coming up in London in the very near future here, is that right? >> Yes, I believe it's in April and then we have another one in May in Las Vegas. >> Okay, so then the big one in North America is going to be Vegas this year? >> Correct, correct, it's in May. >> Okay, great. And then, what about the, so then you also talked about Bangalore, talk about -- >> Yeah, Bangalore, I don't have all the dates in my head, so I apologize, but I think Bangalore is, I believe, in August or September, and then Tokyo, I believe, it's in June, so I'll have to confirm all those dates -- >> But one of the unique things, right, is that Bangalore show has actually been one of your largest shows of the year. >> It's been amazing. So I literally missed that show by one week. When I joined the company, I was super excited about having the ability to go visit the customers and the partners within the show. I think last year they had 6000 people, so it's an amazing opportunity this year to go see it first-hand. I don't know what the audience is going to be like, I'm assuming it's going to be more than 6000, but feeling the energy and the excitement from attendees is what I'm really looking forward to. >> Well, that just shows, right, that the software industry, particularly cloud-enabled software industry, is now a global industry, right? >> It is, it is, absolutely, because again, cloud allows those barriers to entry for companies, wherever they are, to be lowered, and customers in different regions can have the latest, greatest directly from the cloud and they both use the product, you know, when it comes out, and so that's, obviously, a super big advantage. The other thing I should be remiss if I didn't say, you know, because it's also available in the cloud, and it's web-based, it's easy to use, easy to access, a lot of our first-time customers are business users. They're not even IT people, so they just go in, start playing with the product, you know, automating a few processes, and then start to scale end-to-end, and then of course they build the COE, IT gets involved. So being able to start your automation journey as small, and then grow as you scale from any parts of the world is really what this opportunity gives us. >> Okay, well thank you for your time today, Riadh. I'm fascinated, everything you guys are doing. Super hot category for those folks out there that want to touch base with Automation Anywhere, shows in London, Vegas, Bangalore, and then where was the fourth one? >> I think Tokyo -- >> Tokyo. >> And then Bangalore after that, yes. >> Okay, fantastic. >> Yes. >> Thanks for joining us today. This is Donald Klein, I'm the host of theCUBE. I'll see you next time. (upbeat music)

>>Hi, I'm Peter Burress. And welcome back to know the Cube conversation. This one from B M sees Helix Immersion Day at Santa Clara Marriott in Santa Clara, California. Once again, we've got a great set of topics for today Today, Right now we're gonna talk about is the everybody talks about the explosion in the amount of data, but nobody talks about the resulting or associated explosion in software. And that may in fact, be that an even bigger issue than the explosion and data. Because ultimately, we want to apply that data and get work done. That's gonna require that we rethink service's rethink service management, rethink operations and rethink operations management in the context of how all this new software is gonna create new work but also can perform new classes of work. Soto have that conversation. We've got a couple of great guests. New York. And here is the BMC president of Digital Service is in operations management division to BMC. Welcome back to the Cube. >>Thank you. >>And me Here shoot Close the CEO of Automation anywhere here. Welcome to the Cube. So Naoki, I want to start with you. A year ago, we started on this journey of how this new digital service is is going to evolve to do Maur types of work for people. How has be emcees? Helix Platform evolved in that time. >>So if you remember last time, it's almost a year. Back when we launched Helix, which was all around taking the service management capability that we had on Prem Minute available in cloud continue rise so customers can run and cut of their choice and provided experience through various channels bought as channel off that customer experience. This is what we had released last time. We call it the three C's for Helix, Everything in cloud containerized with cognitive capabilities so customers can transform that experience in this version. What we are extending helix is with the operation side. So although I Tom capabilities that we have in our platform are now a part off Felix, so we have one entering platform so that customers can discover every asset that they have on prominent loud monitor those assets detected anomalies service bought four lines of business and for i t. For immediate issues that happen, vulnerabilities that are there in the system and automatically optimized capacity and cost on holistic. This whole closed loop off operations and service coming together is what this next day off innovations that were launching BMC Helix >>Soma here New York He's talked about very successfully, and Felix has been a very successful platform for improving user experience. But up front, I noted that we're not just talking about human beings as users anymore. We're talking about software is users R p a robotic process. Automation is a central feature of some of these new trends. Tell us a little bit about how robotic process automation is driving an increased need for this kind of digital service in operations management capability? >>Sure think it a high level you have to think of. The new organization has augmented organization that are human and what's working side by side, each doing what they're best at. And so, in a specific example of a service organization, uh, the the BMC hell ex ist Licht Alexis Taking this is Think of this as a utility where the way you plug it into an electricity outlet and switch on the light and you get the electricity, you plug into the BMC helix, and behind it, you have augmented workforce of chat boards are pia bots, human beings each doing what they're best at and giving a far superior customer experience and like any other that is happening now. And that's the future off service industry. >>But when you point a human, so to speak metaphorically into that system, there's a certain amount of time there's a certain amount of training. There's a certain, and as a consequence, you can have a little bit more predictable scale. That doesn't mean that you don't end up with a lot of complexity, but our p A seems that the potential of our P A seems that you're going to increase the rate at which these users, in this case, digital users are going to enter into the system. You don't have a training regimen you can attach to them. They have to be tested. They have to be discovered. You have to be put in operation with reliability. How is that ultimately driving the need for some of these new capabilities? >>I think you if you think of this, if you think of this box as a digital workers, you almost have to go through the same process that you would go through human beings. You onboard them in terms of you, configure them. You trained them with cognitive capabilities and the and then in. The one difference is the monitor themselves. Without any bias they give, they can give you. They can give their own performance rating performance rating card. Um, but the beauty off this is when human and what's work together because there are some functions that the bots can do well. And then at some point they can hand off to the human beings and human beings. Do some of the more interesting work that is based on judgment. Call customer service. All of that, um, so that the combination is is the end goal for everybody >>and to add would be here said right, that customer experience, whether you're providing experience to employees, are consumers and customers. That is the ultimate goal. That's ultimate result of what you want to get and the speed at which you provided experiences, the accuracy of which you provide experience of the cause, that which you provided experience becomes a competitive sensation, which is where all this automation, this augmentation that they're doing with humans and bots is what enables us to do that right for or large enterprise customers May major service organizations trying to transform into that beautiful. >>But increasingly, it seems as though the, uh, the things that we have to do to orchestrate in ministry Maur users digital and human undertaking Maur complex tasks where each is best applied is really driving a lot of new data mentioned upfront, an enormous amount of software and you said new experiences. But those experiences have to be reliable, have to be secure. They have to be predictable. So that suggests this overwhelming impact of all of these capabilities. You talk about a digital tsunami? What are some of the key things? Do you think Enterprise is gonna have to do to start engaging that? >>Yeah, I'm incredibly college 40 nursery revolution. Whether we call our initial transformation, I think what we all are experiencing is the tsunami Texan ami, right, Tsunami of clouds, where you have corruption clouds, private clouds have a close marriage clouds, tsunami of devices, not just more valid visors, but also has everything alone, as is getting connected devices, tsunami of channels. I mean, as an end user, I wantto experience that in the channel of my preference lack as a journalism as a channel tsunami of bots, off conversation, bullets in our Peabody. So in this tsunami, I think what everyone is trying to figure out is, how do they manage this explosion? It's humanly impossible to do it all manually. You have toe augment it. But of course, intelligence, I'm all. But then, of course, boss, become a big part of that augmentation toe. Orchestrate all of them back to back cross. >>I would say that the this is no longer nice to have, because if you look it from over consumer's perspective, last 20 years of digital technologies off from my Amazons and Google's of the World, Netflix and others they have created this mind set off instant customer gratification, and we all been trained for it. So what was acceptable five years ago is no longer acceptable in our own lives, I e. And so this new standard off instant result instant outcome. Instant respond. Instant delivery V. Just expected. Right. Once you're end, consumer begins to do that. We as a business is no longer have a choice that's writing on the wall. And so what? This new platform Zehr doing like you'd be emcee. Hellickson automation anywhere is delivering their instant gratification. And when you think about it, more and more of the new customers that are millennials, they don't know any other way. So for them, this is the only experience they will relate. Oh, so again, this is not nice to see Oh, it is. But it is the only way only the world will operate, right? >>Well, what we're trying to do is take on new classes of customer experience, new operational opportunities to improve our profitability, innovate and find new value propositions. But you mentioned time arrival rate of transaction is no longer predictable. It's gonna be defined by the market, not by your employees. We could go on and on and on with that. What is taught us a little bit about automation anywhere and what automation anywhere is doing to try to ensure that as businesses go off to attend to the complexity creates new value at the same time can introduce simplicity where they could get scale and more automation. >>Sure, you earlier mentioned that with explosion of data came the explosion off applications And what? Let me focus on what problem or permission anywhere solves. If you look at large organizations, they have vast amount of applications, sometimes 408 100 few 1000 what we have seen. What we've been doing historically is using people as a human bridges between this applications. And we have a prettier that way for too long. And that's the world today. >>So humans are the interface >>humans at the bridges between applications and often called the salty air operations. That's the easiest way to describe it. So the what are two mission ever does is it offers this technology platform robotic process automation area in an Arctic split form that integrates all off it together into a seamless automation bought that can go across and with the eye it can make intelligent, intelligent choices. Um, and so now take that Combined with the BMC, Alex, and you have a seamless service platform that can deliver superior experience. >>So we've got now these swivel chair users now being software, which means that we could discover them more easily. We can monitor them more easily, and that feeds. He looks >>absolutely so you know, in our consumer wall, in a day to day life We are used to a certain experience of how we consume data or consume experiences with our TVs and all the channels that experience that we have an identity. Life is what people expect when they walk into the company, right walking to the Enterprise, which every IittIe organization is trying to figure out. How do they get to that level of maturity? So this is what the combination of what we're doing with Felix and automation anywhere brewing's that consumer great experiences into an enterprise >>world. Some here when we think about our p A. We're applying it in interesting and innovative ways, no question about it. But there are certain patterns of success. Give us some visibility into what you are seeing leads to success. And then what's the future of our P? A. How's that gonna involve over the next few years? >>Sure. Um, R P has been deployed across virtually every industry and virtually every department, so there are many ways to get started in All of them are right. But often we find is that you can either start in a central organization where in terror organization is doing everything centrally. It is a great way to get started. But eventually we learned that the Federated Way is the best way to end where hundreds of offices all over the world, if you are especially large organization, each business unit is doing it with I t providing governments and central security and policies and an actual bots running and being implemented all over the world eventually for a large gilt transformation. That is a common pattern we have seen among successful customers. >>And where do you think this is? Houses pattern going to evolve as enterprises gained more familiarity with it, innovating new and interesting ways and his automation anywhere, and others advance the state of the art. Where do you think it's gonna end up? >>The read is going is is I define it as an app store experience or a Google play experience. So if you think about how we operate over mobile devices today, if you want something on your device, you would look for a nap that does that. We're getting to a point where there is bought for everything in a digital worker for everything. So if you need certain job done, you first go to a what store? Uh that is an automation anywhere website. Look for about that. Does something higher or download that Bart. Get the work done and it comes pre built. Like many. There are works with BMC Felix on many of those, So s. So that is your 1st 1st way you will look, look for getting your work done in a new body economy. And if it if there's no but available, then you look for other options. It will transform how we work and how we think of >>work. In many respects, it's the gig economy with perfect contractor, and it's that leads to some very in string challenges. Ultimately, we start thinking about service Is so Ni aki based on what me here just talked about. Where does digital service is go as our P A joins other classes of users in creating those new experiences at new Prophet points and new value propositions, >>it becomes a competitive. How you provide that service can become a big competitive sensation for financial institutions. For telcos, which is a service industry, right, you're providing that service and, like two meters point, then the user hits that switch. They expect the light to come on If I'm an end user, that consumer warning a service from my telco provider, all from my, um, financial institution. I expect that service to be instantaneous at the highest accuracy accuracy at which super wide is gonna start driving competitor, official for financial institutions of financial institution Telco two Telco and that So I C companies, differentiating and really surviving are thriving in the long term. >>It's no longer becoming something that's nice to have its jacks or better in business, too. >>That's right. And the demo of the live demo that we saw today was really impressive because it sure that what would have taken a few days to happen now happens in three minutes. Right? It is, which is, which is almost the time it takes to call an uber. You know, when interpreters begin to do work at a pace that what you call an uber that's that's that's the future. Yes, it's here. >>Yes, so do I mean the demo that we do the entire enter and demo to request additional storage and being able to provisional remediating issues that we see predict cost and make it available to the end user develop whoever it is is asking for it in minutes. Alright, which used to take days and days. No, no, no, not to mention sometimes in pixels. >>It's typically done faster at scale, with greater reliability. Greater greater security, Certainly greater predictability, et cetera. All right. Here. Shukla, CEO of automation Anywhere. Yeah. Kenny, our president off the dental Service is and operations management division at BMC. Thanks both of you for being on the Cube. >>Thank you. >>Thank you. >>Once again, I'm Peter Burress and I want to thank you for participating in this cube conversation from Santa Clara Marriott at B M sees helix immersion days until next time.

(upbeat music) >> From our studios in the heart of Silicon Valley, Palo Alto, California, this is a CUBEConversation. >> Hello everyone, welcome to Palo Alto's CUBE studios. I'm John Furrier, host of theCUBE. We're here for a special CUBEConversation as part of our new brand of tech leader series as well as Extracting the Signal From the Noise. We're here with Gary Conway, the CMO of Automation Anywhere, a hot startup, heavily funded, attacking a whole new market segment, that's kind of changing the game of value in digital, obviously, RPA, robotic process automation, is the buzz word. It's actually real, it's happening, we're seeing a lot of success in companies there. It's changing the way business is operated, business is structured, and value is created. Gary, thanks for joining me. >> My pleasure. >> So we covered your event, Automation Anywhere. You guys are essentially doing very very well, heavily funded, growing like crazy. RPA is one of the fastest growing segments in this next generation digital culture. You're seeing a lot of companies coming out attacking this. What's your perspective, why is RPA so important, why is it so hot? >> It's a pretty simple reason, actually. You know, the truth of the matter is that companies are now, because of RPA, able to automate parts of their business processes, or entire processes that they were never able to automate before, and they can do it with RPA at a relatively little cost compared to a lot of other technologies out there, especially from the big ERP vendors. We say that, and we really believe this, and we're finding this to be true, that since the onset of automation about 30 years ago, from the big technology companies, only about 20% of the processes that businesses manage now are actually automated. The 80% of them that are not automated are pretty much done by human beings, you know. Millions of human beings employed to manage those back office processes. RPA is enabling companies to actually automate more of those processes than ever before. >> Before we get started, just quickly define, what is RPA for the folks that are learning for the first time, because we're now seeing the concept really penetrating mainstream right now. It's becoming, frankly, a topic that's being discussed across most of the largest enterprises and small business, what is RPA? >> So RPA means robotic process automation. So think of them as robots that are built as predesigned software bots that you can plug into any business process, and it'll automate a part of that process, or the entire process, by just plugging it in. It actually is capable of observing what human beings do, remembering what human beings do, and then repeating that again and again and again, only in a fraction of a second. That's the easiest way to think of it. >> So when I think of robots, I think of like a machine, you know, moving things around, from, like, manufacturing, whatnot. It's beyond that, it's not just robots, it's software as well, and this is the key in all this. >> It is software, I mean. >> It is software, it's not robots. >> RPA is only software. >> It's only software. >> I think most people, when they think of robotics, do think of, you know, mechanical robots used in manufacturing. That's not what RPA is. RPA is robotics that is only constructed with preconfigured software. >> I want to get your take on the impact to business and how leaders are adapting to this, but first I want to get to the mainstream topic that is trying to be figured out, and the classic one is technology's going to automate my jobs away, and the example that I use is retail. Most people go to retail, and they think, you know, whether it's a person out of college, or someone working in retail, that oh my god, a robot's going to show up and move stuff on the shelves, and eliminate those jobs. It's not so much robots, per se, it's Amazon that's going to impact in retail. We know what Amazon and Walmart has done to commerce. So that's already happening, retail's impacted. It's not so much that jobs are going away, they're just changing. That's our opinion. Can you share your opinion on the impact of software automation to jobs? >> We agree that jobs are not going away. They will change, but I always tell people when I'm asked this question that there's not been one technology that's ever been introduced that has actually done anything but create more jobs, and I always use the example of the PC. You know, I'm old enough to remember when the PC was introduced, the headlines were what will people do with all this additional time? You know, people were predicting a three day work week because of all the efficiencies that would be created by the PCs, and in fact the opposite has happened. Technology actually makes people more productive, and when they're more productive they're capable of doing more things. So with the automation of certain things that people happen to be doing now, those people are being upskilled, they are being redeployed to other jobs, as we've seen in the past, and actually, more jobs are being created. >> You know, we cover a lot of the Big Data space going back to 2010 when we first started theCUBE, at Hadoop World, which that kind of had its course, but ultimately Big Data, which became AI, you know the bank teller example, you know the ATM was going to kill the branches, when in reality there's been even more branch offices-- >> That's what we're seeing, yeah. >> than ever before. So again, I think the argument is pretty clear from the data and the trend, technology is actually helping create new jobs, but not the jobs maybe that there were once there. That seems to be the big debate, so we agree with you on that. Now we applied some of our, not RPA, but we had some technology that applied to all of our videos that we did with you at your event, and a couple things came out of the entity extraction. I want to share with you, I want to get your reaction. Business hubs, human versus machines, complex problems, digital colleagues, digital worker, new potential applications, digital native companies, supply chain, system integrators, labor platforms, AI assistance, inefficiencies, and machine learning. These are key words that really kind of point to the next generation. This is essentially the language of your company. What's your reaction to that? >> Well, I'm not sure it's the language of our company as much as it's the language that people are using to determine what role they will play in the future, and what role, how they will impact their businesses going into the future. So these are not our terms, these are terms that exist in the space right now as people try to determine for themselves the role they will play in defining the future and how they will use technology to make their businesses more efficient. >> And companies are using cloud, for instance, to kind of reshape. We had a big conversation yesterday around, you know, do I want to be in the business of managing data centers, or be in the business of managing my business with technology. These concepts are interesting from an industry standpoint. Business hubs. Good concept, I get that. Digital worker. This is the impact that you guys are enabling. What's the managerial leadership role as an executive or a worker in these new cultural shifts? Because, as this is being enabled, new value is being created. Digital is enabling that. How does someone manage all this? What do you guys see, how do you see that playing out? >> Look, I think that whenever things are changing, and things are changing dramatically in business today, the only way to manage it is a day at a time. You can't project yourself so far into the future that you trip over the things that are immediately facing you now. So my suggestion would always be to evaluate options every day, every week, and make decisions when it's the right time to make decisions for your business. But let's go back to one of the terms you described, digital worker. So a digital worker in our view is actually available in what we call our bot store, which is a bot that is actually preconfigured to have skillsets that you would require. So let's just say you need an order-to-cash person, person who understands that, and it's a part of an automated process. The idea is that you would be able to download a digital worker with similar skills, and plug that bot into your process, and it would begin to work with, I would say, the skillsets of somebody who understands the order-to-cash process. That's really what a digital worker is. Now imagine that, in the future, and that future is not that far away, where every human being will be working side by side with a digital worker, so that the human being can offload the repetitive things that a digital something could actually do for them, and that digital worker would take on the task-based stuff, freeing up the individual to use their creativity to create higher order value for the business. That's really what we mean by digital worker and the importance of a digital colleague, for example. >> I think that it's a profound statement, and I think this is one of the cultural shifts that I see that this next generation workforce and leaders have to get their arms around, and in watching folks in Washington, D.C., we've been covering a lot of the procurement changes going on in government and businesses. There's a leveling up going on in the IQ of organizations, because that is a profound statement. Now we saw that with DevOps in cloud. You know, you talk to tech people, if you're doing the repetitive task more than three times, automate it. You're getting at something a little bit different. You're not just automating, you're adding intelligence to it, so what I like about the process automation area, is it's not just an undifferentiated, heavy lifting, mundane task. Yes it is, but there's an era of machine learning, you're seeing intelligence being applied to it, so it's truly becoming an augmentation to a human. That's kind of what I hear you saying. Do you agree with that, and is that something that you guys see happening, and what does that actually mean for the enterprise? >> No, I do agree with it, and we are at various stages of that evolution. But like anything else in business, and in life, you don't just flip a switch and all of a sudden people migrate to that new model, that's not how life really works. We evolve to those things, and I think what we're seeing is a very fast evolution to exactly what you just described. >> I want to get your thoughts on operationalizing new technology. You know, obviously, being an entrepreneur, I've done a bunch of startups, and the startup ethos is come on a narrow entry, get a landing area, and then sequence to the broader market opportunity. There's a lot of entrepreneurial ethos involved in how to operationalize something new like RPA, because you can't just, you know, shut down the old and bring in the new, there's a method there. This is a challenge in any new technology. How do you guys see this playing out? Because you guys are on the front end, bringing real value to the table, but people might want to get more aspirational and then get the reality. How do you get into the point of going into someone and saying I love what you guys do, what's the playbook, what do I do next? This is the challenge, can you share your thoughts on how an executive or a business can operationalize these benefits? >> So we have a lot of customers, 1800 customers, unique customers, and 2800 entities around the world that are using the software now. And I think that each of them had one thing in common. They started in bite-sized chunks. They said we're going to try this, and what's happening with RPA, which is one of the reasons it's growing so fast, is that once you try it, once you implement a few bots to automate the things that you weren't able to automate before, it starts ramping like this, right? It has a very very fast ramp-up. So you realize some successes in the processes that you begin to automate that you've never automated before. And the more you do it, the more you learn from it. The more you learn from it, the more you want to do it, the more processes you identify that could be automated, and should be automated, and what starts happening in most companies is they start adopting much much faster once they understand the benefits of it. And the benefits to business is driving higher levels of efficiencies, and reducing costs dramatically. >> So the tie to value is fast. >> Right, the value is very fast, compared to-- >> And that's driving the ramp-up, to your point. >> And that's driving the map. >> The flywheel kicks in, you start with a process that's known, and you automate it, wow, that's good, do it again, do it again. >> Correct. Well, do it again, and do it with more processes, right? And the other unique thing about this technology is human beings, once they understand the advantages of automating things that other human beings may have to do manually, most of those people who have been doing them manually will say I want more of that. We should be automating this, we should be automating that, and it actually makes them much more productive, and it makes them feel as if they are delivering higher value to the business themselves, and what an amazing human dynamic that is. >> You know, I was talking to Dave Vellante about this, we were talking about the TAM, the total adjustment market, for RPA, we're like, I think it's just in the trillions because with digital, everything is connected, so you can measure everything. Everything is ultimately a supply chain, whether it's network effect for internet, whether it's, you know, some process with cryptocurrency, whether it's blockchain or a process with cybersecurity, digital is pretty much connected, it's pretty much a supply chain. Some of them are more formed than others. This seems to be the entry point that most people would go to. Do they go to the supply chains first, or, better yet, what's the use cases that you see as the low hanging fruit that people come in on and automate? Is it simple supply chain stuff that's known, or are they applying it as they grow to other areas? >> It's very broad, but the fastest adoption, especially beginning about two years ago, were from the companies in industries like banking, other financial services, insurance, healthcare, manufacturing, which is supply chain, as you rightly point out. Those businesses that tend to be earlier adopters of technology have also become earlier adopters of RPA. But what we're finding now is it's now, because of the results that these businesses have demonstrated, and because digital native competitors are actually coming into the space and threatening what are sometimes referred to as legacy businesses, businesses are not delaying the investments they're making so that they can actually become more competitive, and when you think about that, it's not just the efficiencies that these technologies like RPA drive, but it's the ability to make businesses acutely more competitive than they've ever been before. >> That's a great angle, competitive strategy has always been one of those things where, you know, the cloud native world or digital native world was like oh yeah, pick one feature, innovate, and you can go beat an incumbent. The incumbent now has leverage in the marketplace, whether it's physical presence or other assets. Using RPA gives them a way to level up, so to speak. >> Level up, for sure. So let's just take something we're all familiar with, right? You can now go on your phone, and you can have a car at your house to take you somewhere in about four minutes in most cities, right? If you have an issue, you can solve that issue on your phone as well. You don't have to call anybody, you just solve it on your phone. These ride share companies have made it so simple, it's almost as if there's no such thing anymore as a front office or a back office. Digital native companies have brought those things together, and now there's one office. So that immediacy is what legacy companies are actually competing against, and if those companies don't adopt this kind of automation to make more efficient those processes and narrow the gap between customer facing and back office, they won't be able to compete. >> Yeah, they can turn a liability into an advantage, with software. Big big bullish on the software, I think the competitive landscape also is interesting, I'd like your thoughts on. There seems to be a battlefield, at least from my perspective, my opinion is that, okay, RPA software is out there, it's going to grow really fast. The competitive battle will be around intelligence. How do you guys view the competitive levers? How do you guys compete, what's the advantage? Is it intelligence, is it being more intelligent, is it more operational, what's the advantage you guys see vis-a-vis the competition? >> Yeah, so we're actually seeing a sort of a bringing together of technology, what we have considered to be strictly technology, and what's being described broadly now as artificial intelligence. Artificial intelligence is still evolving. Everybody has his own definition of what it really is, but what we're seeing, and I think in other sectors we're seeing the same thing, is now the merging of things that have truly been technology with things that are perceived to be artificial intelligence, and they're beginning to come together. What that will look like five years from now, nobody knows. What it'll look like 10 years from now, no one can even conceive of, but we're seeing that dynamic in place now, and this is the beginning. >> It's a great wave, excited to have you on and share your insights, Gary. It's great stuff you guys are doing over there at Automation Anywhere, love the, we love this wave, I think it's going to be relevant. My final question for you, though, is little bit different. You know, you're at a cocktail party, you're at a friend's house, you're at a confab, and you see people that aren't in the business, and they're like Gary, I need to get, I need to be more competitive. What do I do, what is this RPA thing, how do I change my culture, how do I get my people and my process aligned with software, what's the playbook, what's your advice? >> So what I would say is, get started as quickly as possible, because if you delay too long, you will be left behind. So that's would be my first bit of advice. The other, it would be to start slowly. Learn as quickly as you can. Don't worry about automating things that are hard to automate, go to the things that are easy to automate. Companies find that when they address those things first, they're actually able to drive more success faster, and then they will look for more and more opportunities based on what they've learned and the success that they've derived, and that's what happens to create this ramp effect, where it becomes almost viral-like. Where you have one process that works great, you automate that, you automate another one, you automate five more, 10 more, and before you know it, believe it or not, we have customers that are implementing more than 3000 bots over the last year and a half, and that's how they started. >> Get rid of the mundane work, you've got happy people, HR is happy, you've got more revenue coming in, you're more competitive as a business, this is a good value proposition. It's an easy sale. >> Nothing's easy, but it has a huge appeal. >> Gary, thanks so much for coming on and sharing your insights around RPA, appreciate it and congratulations on your success. >> Thank you. >> This is CUBEConversation, and I'm John Furrier here in Palo Alto, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From Palo Alto, California it's theCUBE, covering VMware Women Transforming Technology 2019. Brought to you by VMware. >> Hi Lisa Martin on the ground with theCUBE at VMware Palo Alto California at the 4th annual Women Transforming Technology event wt². And pleased to welcome to theCUBE for the first time Rashim Mogha, the Head of Product at Automation Anywhere. Rashim it's great to have you on theCUBE. >> Thank you so much Lisa very excited to be here >> And good to see you again you and I were, moderating the together woman achieve event a few months ago that Dell sponsors back in I want to say November 2018 >> Yeah. >> where you one of the exciting things in that swag bag was one of your five books, Fast-Track Your Leadership Career. Tell me about the book what inspired it what can readers learn in that book. >> Absolutely so I come from a project management background and for me everything has to be in the form of a template and that's how it works, right? So when I was new to my leadership career, I would read all these leadership books but they would just focus on one area so you had to read like so many books and skim through all those books to extract what worked for you. Now for me it was important to kind of templatize that and when I templatized it, I actually started talking about it at various events, one of them was Women Transforming Technology last year and as I gave that after I finished that session and we started I started walking out, one of the attendees came to me and said, this was such great information do you have a book? and I said no I don't but I'll have one soon and then I met with my publisher whom I met through one of the speakers at WT2 and we started working on it and in September we had a book. >> September 2018 and then, probably surprisingly to you 11 hours later, this book was on the Amazon number-one bestseller list. >> Yes it was >> that must have been like whiplash what? >> It was a very emotional day it was a roller coaster so we had thought about my publishers had more belief than I did in terms of the book having the potential to be an Amazon bestseller. And number one bestseller to be precise and I was like okay let's give it a try. So I was supposed to go to Grace Hopper Conference last year at that time, and I decided to stay back because the book launch was planned on that day. So we launched we started telling everybody that the book is on Amazon, at about ten o'clock in the morning and by seven o'clock I got an got a text message from my publisher with the screenshot, saying it was number one. >> So yeah very exciting it it took me a few days to realize what it really meant to be an Amazon bestseller. >> I bet that feels amazing. So tell me a little bit before we dig into the book and what you're doing here at wt² today, tell me a little bit about your career path in technology so we can understand some of the recommendations that you're giving the current and subsequent generations about how to fast-track it. Where did you start was it I was a stem interested kid to college. >> Yeah so I was actually studying to be a doctor because I come from India so in India they're just three careers, you're either a doctor or an engineer or you're nobody right so and this was when I was growing up so I actually unfortunately fell sick and could not take my medical exam and missed it actually took the exam, missed it by a few points and and did not know what to do because all my life I had thought about becoming a doctor and it just so happened that there was a computer science program that was out there and my mom saw, saw in a scholarship opportunity over there and she said well just give it a try if you get the scholarship then we'll talk about it and then fortunately for me I got 75% scholarship in that. So I was like okay I'll give it a try so I botany majored and did computer science and that's where my journey started into into the technology field. And got an opportunity to be absorbed within that group the same company absorbed me as as a developer. And within six months I get an opportunity to write a book and that was amazing because I never thought that I could be a teacher or be in front of anybody because I am so impatient as a person right? So so then we started when I started writing the book I realized , this is a great way to empower people and you know and it's a it's a great way to use my technical skills but also my writing abilities. And then you know six months down the line, I got an opportunity to be a project manager I took that so in my life if you see if my career path I've kind of bounced around a little bit, taken risks early on in my career and I continue to take risks in my career because if you don't give it a try you would never know. >> Exactly. >> So and that's what I tell women today like when you come out of college or even if you are in somewhere in your mid-career. You know don't don't tie yourself to a particular job role, or to a particular area try out different things and if there's an opportunity that's given to you, grab it with both your hands and then figure out how you're going to do the job well. >> I like that I always think if you have a goal that doesn't give you butterflies, it's not worth having. >> Yeah >> So in in just giving our viewers a little bit of a snapshot what are some of the things that they can learn and take away from Fast-Track Your Leadership Career book. >> Yeah so first and foremost is understanding your superpower right? How are you different from other people what do you bring to the table that others do not. Because in today's day and age, almost everybody does a great job right? What sets you apart for the next role is what you should always know. Building your personal brand most often we introduce ourselves as what job title we have and the company that we work for. It's important to know and have your identity beyond the company. The third piece is understanding the difference between sponsors and mentors. And that is the place where I think women really need to invest some time because we normally seek mentors. We very rarely go out and look at people and say you know what this person is going to be my sponsor and she or he is actually going to be my cheerleader when I'm not there in the room and and recommend me for that next job. >> So that's the difference between a sponsor I like that a sponsor and a mentors. Mentor is giving you advice and guidance, a sponsor is actually out there championing, >> Absolutely >> why you should hire a Rashim bring her into your team, these are all the great things that she does. >> Absolutely and then then there are other topics that we cover we cover navigating work politics. Most of us tend to stay away from politics but actually how to get into that you know understanding that I would call it work force intelligence if you will and leveraging it to further your projects in a good way. And then also building your support system now typically when we women talk about support system, we think about just two aspects. Emotional support system and the logistic support system but but there is also financial support system and intellectual support system and that's what you need to start building, to be able to further your career. >> I got to get a copy of this book. You probably have some, I'm guessing (mumbles). So you have a couple of sessions here at WT wt², building voice experiences through Alexa skills but one that I want to dig into in the last few minutes that we have. Project you a DevOps approach to a leadership career. Tell me about that pan and that breakout. >> Yeah so if you if you really look at the concept of DevOps it's or CI/CD model its development and then pushing it into operations and then moving into development again and then operations. So when you actually start preparing for your leadership career, that's the way you go. You you rinse and repeat the cycle what works for you in this role, will not work for you in your next role. So how are you continuously preparing yourself and using that DevOps approach, to kind of move to the next level, is what we'll cover in that session. >> That's fantastic. So one thing I also want to mention is that so we talked about becoming a number one Amazon bestseller, the book Fast-Track Your Leadership Career, just about six months ago in fall of 2018. It also inspired you to found, an initiative called eWOW, empowered Women of the World. Tell me a little bit about eWOW and why this book book number five being so instantly successful was so inspirational for eWOW. >> Yeah so I come from a training and enablement background so for me it was and and you know when you when you look at my personal brand, it's all about enabling and empowering people. So I wanted to basically find avenues, to be able to empower other woman. And essentially you know at eWOW, we believe that every woman, has the capability or is a leader in her own, you know her own right. And all that she needs is an intellectual platform and a framework and that's where eWOW came into being. We started off with just podcast, doing weekly podcast picking up topics around leadership and technical topics, we have audience in about 20 countries right now and then as an extension to that, we also launched five Alexa skills and that's going to be the topic that I'm going to be speaking about later today and it was all about you know different ways of enabling and empowering people. >> I love that. Well Rashim it's been such a pleasure, to have you on theCUBE. We thank you for giving us some of your time and we look forward to talking with you again about, maybe book number six? >> Well you never know. Last time I walked out of this conference, I had a book in ring so you never know what's up. >> You never know. But thank you so much. Your story is very inspiring and and i can't wait to, get my hands on a copy of that book. >> Thank you so much. >> My pleasure, Lisa Martin with theCUBE on the ground at wt² from VMware. Thanks for watching. (upbeat music)

>> From New York City, it's theCUBE! Covering Automation Anywhere Imagine, brought to you by Automation Anywhere. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Midtown Manhattan at the Automation Anywhere Imagine 2019. We we're here last year, it was about 1,500 people. And really, Automation Anywhere is really hot in the RPA space, Robotic Process Automation, but it's really a lot more than that, it's not just automating some processes, it's really about new ways to work, personal digital assistants, and really changing the game. We're excited to have our next guest, first time on theCUBE. He's Prince Kohli, the CTO of Automation Anywhere. Prince, great to see you. >> Thank you, Jeff, good to be here. >> Yeah, so you weren't here last year, so I'm curious to get your general impressions of the event and kind of the scene here with the Automation Anywhere ecosystem. >> Of course, I wasn't here last year, I heard a lot about it, but the sense of excitement, the sense of growth, and the sense of opportunity that is there in everyone. The number of customers who were here and were excited to be here, partners who were here and were really happy to be here, and of course, the team, my own team. It just, just the sense of excitement, and the fact that we are on a hockey stick, in terms of growth, is just palpable. >> Right, so I'm curious to get your take, you've been in the Valley for a long time, and really the RPA theme is about digital workers. In fact, they get roles, they get names, they talk about 'em on stage like they're people. And the idea is that we all have our own assistant, which has been talked about forever but maybe you kind of had an offshore person you could help dial in your laundry, nothing like what we're talking about today. So, as you look back at the evolution as to how we got here, what's your take on the role of a personal digital assistant? >> That's a great question. The way, in my view, the way it evolved was that it is similar to cloud computing. I think the idea that these things could happen. I mean, you know, Star Trek had it, right? >> Right. >> So I think those things have, as an idea, have existed, but usually it was in fantasy. But what has happened in the last five or ten years, is that computing, the need for automation across applications, the need for work to be less mundane, the need for creativity in our human jobs, those have become really important. And therefore the definition of work is evolving. What can be automated therefore must be automated. And it is not automation within an application, it is automation across applications, across processes, across whichever applications, from whichever vendors there may be, without changing the application itself. And that, with the tenurial of AI and acceptance of AI, I think has allowed people to start accepting the notion of a digital worker. >> It's pretty interesting, one of the topics of the keynote was that the people were the integration point between (laughs) a lot of these systems, super inefficient. And what I think is interesting on the AI front and the automation, the place I see it's just a little bit every day, is on Google, or an app that most people are familiar with, whether it's Google Maps, and suddenly it's got restaurants on it, and suddenly it's got reviews on it, and suddenly it's got Street View or whether it's now on the email where suddenly it's guessing my response, it's auto filling even before I start to complete my email. And it really shows that it's this ongoing continuous innovation empowered by AI and a boatload of data that lets these applications do, as you said, things that before would be considered magical. >> Absolutely, and if you look at the digital worker paradigm, right? It's not, if you look at a great example of a digital worker, for example an AP clerk, an account payables clerk. Think of an invoicing function, an invoice comes in, someone has to read it, interpret it, the (coughs), excuse me, the format of invoices are very different across vendors. Reading, interpreting, tying it to a PO, making sure the PO is correct, making sure the PO is valid, was issued at the right time, the item is not late, someone has signed up, there are so many things one has to do. And a person has to do all that today. But it is really very boring work. There is, you just follow a set of steps, there is not judgment involved, really. What an AP digital worker allows you to do (coughs) is to be able to read the document, interpret it, take all the steps that are necessary, and then be able to do that job 24 hours a day, and allow the offloading of this mundane, boring work, right, from a human. So they can be more creative, they can actually make the process better, as opposed to just following a set of simple rules. >> Right, finishing one of the earlier conversations too, and then defining that process so that you can automate it, you're going to unwind inefficiency, you're going to unwind biases, you're going to unwind a whole bunch of stuff to get it to the automated process. So there's all kinds of secondary benefits beyond simply freeing up your time to do more creative work. >> That is correct, and I think, as you said, there are biases, there are also things that must work together in enterprise and today don't. And you know, the vendors, the application vendors are not going to do that, it is not in their own interest. So someone has to, and we are the fabric that brings it together. >> Right, and just people as an integration point, I thought that was classic, that's like the worst place you want to be. And then the other concept that I think doesn't come out enough is a lot of people can be thinking about RPA as a rip and replace for the people. It's not rip and replace at all, it's really augment, just like you augment with your laptop, your phone, other software applications that you're working with every day. >> It's a great point, we have never seen any customer, even talking about ripping and replacing people. What they're trying to do is give people the tools and the augmentation necessary for them to make their own life better. And that improves the moral of the employees, that improves the company's productivity, of course, right, and probably the best output, the best of vidimation that, it improves their customer satisfaction. Because customers are able to create cards faster, are able to get responses faster, claims get adjusted faster, all these things work very well. >> Right, it's interesting, when you sit back and look at the whole technology stack, some really fundamental changes in microprocesser power, networking speed, storage, now the cloud that puts all this access together, and then you add the AL, and the machine learning on top of it, it's really kind of this crazy perfect storm of technologies that are coming together, that are enabling this, which we really couldn't do before, all those pieces weren't there. So if look forward, as CTO, what are some of the things you're excited about, how do you see this evolving, over the next little time, and mid time, I never go longtime, longtime is forever in the future we don't even guess. >> Longtime, I can predict one thing for sure about long time, that whatever we say today will be wrong, in the long-term. Short and medium-term I think we probably will be right. I think short and medium-term, what I see happening, is that AI becoming a part of pretty much every layer of every product, for us for example, as an intelligent RPA platform, AI is embedded in the interaction with the application, interaction with the screen, interaction with the person, interaction with the document, so whichever way we interact with the outside world, as well as how we get better ourselves, AI is embedded in that. And then we use many third-party AI's as our own part to add AI enabled skills, for example understanding if a insurance claim should be denied or not, a credit card should be issued or not. So all these things become part of how AI helps us in day-to-day. So I think that will be the biggest change, I think people, the example that you brought up, right, Google email. I don't think that people predicted that with the first use of AI, in Google, but it is very useful, I use it all the time, because it happens to get better all the time, it knows all my phrases, it knows how I respond, I think that'll happen again and again. >> Right, right, it's just like spell-check, the great unwashed AI that we've all been using for years, and years, and years. Alright Prince, so, the final word is really, I think that's important, is, you're talking about the intelligence. It's not just a process that we apply software to, but this ongoing iterative intelligence applied, whether it's machine learning, or AI, to make it better, and better, and better. It's not just going to be static. >> Not at all, not at all. I think it understands what it needs to be doing, and it then provides ideas on how it could be doing better, and then it integrates those ideas back. Everything gets better over time, and everything that a human finds repetitive, high volume, boring, will eventually get farmed off, to an augmentation, additional worker, additional system. >> And oh, by the way, the number of open rec's is still not going to go down, right? >> Because, you know, if you remember the ATM world, as an ATM started coming in people started worrying tellers will go away and the number of jobs will go down. Actually banks are doing really well, right, and they started hiring more people. The nature of the job changes, the value that humans provide go higher and higher, but that's what happens, eventually. >> Alright Prince, congratulations for you for jumping on a rocket ship, I'm sure it's going to be (laughs) a really fun ride, and having us here at the show. >> Excellent, thank you Jeff, thank you so much. >> Alright, he's Prince, I'm Jeff, your watching theCube, we're on Automation Anywhere Imagine 2019 in midtown Manhattan, thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (energetic music)

>> From New York City, it's theCUBE. Covering Automation Anywhere Imagine. Brought to you by Automation Anywhere. >> We're in midtown Manhattan at Automation Anywhere Imagine 2019. It's about 1,500 people talking about RPA which is part of the story but it's really a much broader story than RPA. It's about the ecosystem, it's about new ways to work, and really, RPA is an enabler but that's not the story in and of itself. It's really about helping people do their jobs better like a whole bunch of other tools that've come out over the years to help us out. We're excited to have a return guest who was here with us last year. He's Ankur Kothari, co-founder, another co-founder and chief revenue officer of Automation Anywhere. Great to see you again. >> Always good to see you, Jeff. >> So, it's been a year since last we spoke in June. >> We've been way less on ground, a lot on the flight. >> Yeah. >> Yeah. >> And, you brought in a bunch of money. You got a lot of resources really to support you now. So, how has that kind of changed? You know, you guys have grown a lot. You've put $500 million in the bank. How's that changing what you're working on now? >> Well, we are deploying that capital in three major ways. One is global expansion. We have now grown into, we have offices now in more than 30, 35 countries, 30 plus countries. So we are getting closer to all our customers worldwide in all top 30 economies and major business hubs where we are now we have opened offices, so, that's one. We are using this capital to build our ecosystem with our partners and all the developers. And, obviously we have invested a lot in our product. Taking the product stack more and more broader which allows us to automate any process that can be automated. >> Yeah, I mean, it's a great resource that you have at your disposal now. And Mihir talked about a lot of kind of higher level topics which I found really good in the keynote, really reframing RPA and personal digital assistance, if you will, around it's just another tool to help people get their job better. And he had some ridiculously sad stats about how much time that people are being asked to do robotic tasks which they really shouldn't be doing those tasks. >> Yes. >> There's much higher value stuff. It's not really rip-and-replace, it's really augment and help people do better. >> Augmenting, yes, yes, absolutely, generally most of these journeys start with this goal of productivity and rightly so. There's nothing wrong with that but as you scale in this journey and you start working, as you onboard more digital workers, digital colleagues as we like to call it, you find that the conversation in your organization changes from productivity to progress because that's what any technological transformation is about. It's not just about productivity, it's truly about progressing your team, your company, your industry, your customers forward. >> Right. >> So, that's what you face. And the second big prize on that front is it allows you to make work human. The moment you start automating every process that can be automated, we start using computers what they were designed for, to process things and not just to be used as a system of records. >> Right. >> So, we can do what we are good at. Solving complex problems using our creativity and empathy. >> Right, one of the things I thought was really interesting was the launch of the community addition, which is free. Free for small businesses, free for developers. I can't remember if there's an academic component-- >> Yes. >> Or not, but, you know, you're the guy who's puttin' money in the cash register. I'm sure there were some interesting conversations about having a free community edition. I wonder if you can share some insight 'cause, you know, that's taking money out of the bank, but obviously there's a much larger strategic goal. >> There's a strategic goal. The problem that we are falling in love with is that what would it take for us to accelerate the journey of every company to become a digital enterprise? How do we share in this new bot economy? And, in order to do that, we have to have every person participate in this whole phenomenon. An idea as big as this can not be one company or a few individuals' ideas. So, we have opened up that whole thing for everyone to participate. The community edition allows students, developers, small businesses, everyone to download. They go to our Automation Anywhere University and they can get freely trained and certified. And they can work with a bot. And they can build a bot and form their own opinion. >> Right. >> And have their own point of view. And the belief behind that is that a good idea can come from anywhere or anyone. And those ideas, once they use our product, they can monetize it in our marketplace which is the Bot Store. >> Right. >> So, that it allows everyone to form an opinion, and contribute to this new bot economy. >> It's pretty interesting. One of the topics Mihir touched on in the keynote was that we often think of, you know, kind of applying new technology to today's world, but we often miss, you know, as he said, that now is not the station, it's the train, and it's moving. And by opening it up to developers now, as you said, you're expanding the width, the breadth, and the potential applications of your technology to problems that you guys have never even thought about before. >> Exactly, that's the real thing. We are automating processes that we are doing now but generally it's about automating what we have not even seen. >> Right. >> These processes were designed for people to do. How would a process look when bots are performing there? I live in Silicon Valley and pretty much a computer science guy working on cutting edge. If you asked me 10 years ago would I let any of my family member live in a stranger's house? I would say, no way. Airbnb is one of the largest hotel chains in the world right now. >> Right, right. >> What that tells you is that human brain mind thinks linearly unless you give them something that allows humans to think exponentially. >> Right >> And that's the whole idea of beauty of technology. It allows us to think exponentially, and once our brain stretch there, then it's not possible to go back. >> Well, the other thing I think is really smart on your play is the competition for developers' attention, right? The developers these days have a lot of power and they can choose of a myriad of technologies in which to apply themselves. So, by having this community edition and opening it up is one part, but the other piece that I think is interesting is the whole bot economy. And I think you opened up the store last time we were here last year. >> Yes. >> Now you're putting money behind it so people can sell. In fact, we had a customer on earlier who's developing some stuff but they can augment that investment by actually selling those bots into this store. >> On the Bot Store, yeah. >> So, I wonder if you can talk a little bit more about how that is evolving? Is it kind of matching your vision? Has it accelerated past your vision? >> It is accelerating much faster than what we imagined first. When we one year ago we launched our marketplace, that is Bot Store. We opened up our University for everyone to get freely trained online. Then we started our community online, which is eight people. And with this community edition, everyone is now participating in it. What that is doing is we believe that more, the one thing that all developers want, is to contribute. Their work to be used by others. >> Right. >> And then, in a Bot Store, it allows them to even monetize it. It allows them to productize it so that personal satisfaction of solving a problem is what the developers get. And such new, creative ideas we are getting once we did that. Yesterday we had Bot Games and more than 250 to 300 developers participated in different games. And they were building these bots on fly, and they were competing. And we believe that when we bring all these people together and we give them a problem, genius comes out. >> Right. >> And it has been true. >> (laughs) So the ecosystem is huge and that's part of why you have your own show. And we go to a lot of shows. We were at Google Cloud a couple weeks ago. So, there's really two components of the ecosystem, traditional ecosystem. You've got the devs we talked about. There's the system integrators and you've got them all here in force. And they don't come out unless they really see a big opportunity. >> Yes. >> And the other part is the ISVs, right? To add all these different components. So, how is that evolving? Where do you see it going over the next year or two? >> It's interesting, you saw today that there was IBM, Microsoft, and Oracle all went on stage with software partnerships, you know Workday. So, we are forming large partnerships with software and how our product works with theirs, and the digital workers are part of that whole equation. And all our service providers and SIs and advisories that've been on this journey with us for the last five to six years and they are ramping up their entire practices to get their customers to become a digital enterprise. So, you see these two different worlds coming together and all the three worlds are working together for the customer to become a digital enterprise. >> Right. >> And, that's the best part. The digital native companies like Amazon, Airbnb, they have got this right. But what about the companies who have been there for 50 years, 100 years? How do they become digital? >> Right. >> And that's a more interesting problem. If you look at the software, and all the service partners and we are working together to solve that problem. So, it's a very interesting mix, an interesting time. And add to that this whole bot economy of developers bringing all these new digital workers. We are seeing the consumption of bot, growing in an exponential way. We are growing multi-force in few months. It's been a great, great ride. >> Right, well, I want to close on that in the last question 'cause you are one of the co-founders. I think there was four founders, if I'm correct. >> Yes. >> And you guys did it a very different way. You basically funded it the best way to fund a company, which is with revenue. >> Yes. >> And customer funded and you didn't go out and get outside money and now you've got this huge round which is actually an A round. >> Yes, it's a... >> So, how does that change the game? I mean, it puts you in a very good spot 'cause you don't have to take that money 'cause you were operating fine. But how does it, from a co-founder point of view, change the trajectory of your journey? >> There is obviously a value that that kind of capital brings because you can grow asymmetrically as well. >> Right, right. >> But the real value, for me, is the five investors who are such tier A, top-tier investors, who are the right partners we have got on this journey. If you think about Goldman Sachs, and NEA, and SoftBank, and General Atlantic which is one of larger growth-- >> Pretty good roster. >> Right. So you get that expertise and you get those partnerships that allows you to think exponentially and grow very fast. So, that's the real value for me in addition to the capital. >> Well, Ankur, thanks for sharing your journey with us. It's really been fun to watch and we're just at another inflection point I think. >> Always great to see you, and again next year. We ought to do this every year. >> All right, very good. >> Bigger and bigger. >> Absolutely, thanks again. >> Thanks a lot. >> He's Ankur, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE. We're at Automation Anywhere in midtown Manhattan. Thanks for watching, we'll see you next time. (upbeat electronic music)

(energetic music) >> From New York City, it's The Cube! Covering Automation Anywhere Imagine, brought to you by Automation Anywhere. >> Hey welcome back, Jeff Rick here with The Cube, we're in midtown Manhattan at Automation Anywhere Imagine 2019, we were here last year for the first time, we're really excited to be back. Since we were here, I think they raised like 550 million dollars, the RPA space is going bananas, and it's a really exciting place to be, both for the company and also for us at Cube, so we're excited to be back, and we got a return visit from last year, she's Neeti Metha, she's the co-founder, we always love to get co-founders, SVP brand strategy and culture, welcome back. >> Good to see you again, Jeff. >> Absolutely. So, first off, congratulations, I mean what a move you guys have made in only one short year. >> Thank you. The space is really taking off, and we are very excited to see the growth. >> So, excited to talk about the technology all day long but you're getting involved in some of the little higher-level discussions which are really really important, we see it in AI, and these are the conversations, I think, are much more important and that's about ethics, and how are these tools being used, what do people need to think about when they're using their tools, we don't just want to qualify bad behavior or bad bias' or bad ways of doing things in the past, that doesn't help so, what are you thinking about, how are you helping customers, what are some of the things they should be thinking about in this space? >> So, two things, one is, I think, society unfortunately has had a lot of unconscious bias in a lot of different ways, you know, it may not be intentional, it may be something that is inherent in the way we behave as a society or a community, or a race, religion, as a gender, it doesn't matter, and somehow, when we do AI and machine learning and we are training these bots, when we feed all this data to them, there are two things that AI helps us with. One is, we get to see it outside-in, so we are looking at it as how the data is looked upon by the machine, and these bias' become a little bit more obvious to us than otherwise, and then two, we can actually take that as a learning point and fix those biases so that we are not always targeting the most populous religion or the most populous race, or the most populous gender at that point, but we are looking at it absolutely gender-neutral, or race-neutral or religion-neutral and so forth, so AI really helps in those two things, one is it allows you to see it and identify it, and two, it allows you to rectify it as you're training these bots to make certain decisions using the analysis and the data that they have at their disposal. >> I'm curious how the outside-in exposes it 'cause for a lot of people, they don't see it, right, that's why the Terma Conch is bias so, is it in the documentation that you maybe never really had to write it down, what are some of the things that suddenly surfaced that, Oh, I didn't really realize we were doing that." >> So two things, one, again, in that sense, the data that we had, there was a lot of data, so having AI and machine learning actually helps us digitize that data and that means that we have a lot more data that can be analyzed, first of all, which was not possible before, and second, we can actually look at that data and cut in and dice it in any way we want to to kind of see these biases a little bit more. When you couldn't have digitized data, then how are you going to have one human brain, for example, look at all the data that was not digitized and analyze it without the digitization, and then actually find analyses around that or find biases around that? So it really does help to digitize that data and, for example, Automation Anywhere's IQ bot helps you digitize dark data or hidden data, and covert it to digitized data and then you can analyze it and do things with that data that you could never before. >> Okay, great. So, one of the things that came up in your great keynote this morning, lot of stuff, I could go on for probably 2 hours, but one of them is really re-thinking this concept of what a bot is, is it digital assistant, or even a digital employee? And thinking of it, not as something that's going to replace what I do per se, but it's just another tool in my toolbox, just like I have a laptop, I have a mobile phone, I have sales force, I have all these other systems, and really thinking of it more that way to offload some of this mundane, soul-crushing work that unfortunately takes up way too much of all of our time. Very different approach than, "This is a substitute for what I do now." >> Technology is always a human enabler, and this is extremely important. So the RPA and the digital workforce is something that we believe that every human who is working could leverage and enable themselves to get to that new level of creativity, that innovation, get rid of the repetitive and mundane and do things that you never could before or you could never get to because of a time perspective. And so, it's extremely important for people to utilize this to actually help themselves, their careers, their own teams, their divisions, their organizations and their societies to get to the next level. >> Right, and open up this productivity gate because, the other thing I think is really funny is, all this conversation about robots taking jobs and yet companies have thousands and thousands of open recs, they can't hire enough people, even with the technology and I'm always drawn to this great invite, we did a Google cloud a couple of years ago, where, when they were starting to scale, they realized they could not do it with people, they just couldn't hire fast enough and had to start incorporating software defined automation, or else they could never take advantage of that. We're seeing that here and that's really part of the whole story and why RPA is so exciting right now, is 'cause you're an enabler for productivity force multiplier. >> That's right and a lot of businesses have certain things that are inherent in their industries, for example, there might be a seasonality requirement, or there might be a requirement where they suddenly have a surge of customers and so forth, and in order to stock that many claims or accounts that they're opening or whatever their process is doing, in order to get that many humans onboard them, train them, at least give them a breathing space to get onboard and actually be responsive to that organization, you can help them by having bots to bridge that gap and allow them to be successful. >> Right. Another interesting stab in here, I got great notes, again it was a terrific keynote, he talked about only 4% of US jobs require a medium level of creativity and I was struck, I remember being in grade school and we watched a movie about people in an auto-manufacturing plant, just the worst kind of monotony they were doing, and this one guy used to load cars on a train and every once in a while he would just drop one on purpose or run the forklift through it just to kind of break up his day. >> Right. >> So, again, the purpose is not to replace, but to really enable people to start to use their brains and be more creative. >> It is to unleash the human potential, and that is what automation will do for it. >> Now, you guys have recently came out with some new research, or if you can give us some of the highlights on some of your new research? >> Absolutely. So, last year, we worked with the Goldsmith's University of London to see if automation, and we believe so, but we wanted to see and validate that automation actually did make work more human. So, did people actually free themselves of their repetitive and mundane and then become more creative and innovative and solve problems that they wanted to and they couldn't before? And the answer was overwhelmingly yes. So this year, we went the next step in that research, and we did a second research, a second wave of research, where we said, "What do organizations, what are the challenges organizations will face if they want to implement this automation and unleash that human potential?" and you should read the research, it's on our website, but it was very very interesting, 72% of people didn't believe that AI or machine learning or automation would be taking over their jobs, yet only 38% of them were exposed or had the opportunity to work with this. So the potential is enormous, technology has to be an organizational change, that's another thing that came out of the research, and corporations should work towards it, but I think this research was very insightful, please do look at it, I think it will be very useful to you. >> So one of the announcements too, that came out today was about the community addition, and I think that's a really interesting play, right, 'cause your introducing a freemium, so people, myself, individuals, educations, businesses, have access to your whole suite for free. I'm sure there was some interesting conversations internally to really make that leap, but it really supports your theme of the democratization of the automation which we hear over and over around data and a lot of pieces of the stack, and so obviously the bigger picture, the bigger opportunity far outweighs a couple of bucks of revenue from this small company or that small company. I wonder if you can kind of share some of the thought behind that? >> Absolutely. This was always part of the strategy, but it was part of the strategy to do it at the right time, when the technology was mature and robust enough one, but when we could actually allow and give that opportunity to every human who wanted to get rid of their repetitive and mundane, give them the opportunity to be better at what they do, to create more and innovate more, and so we are very excited about it, we've had such a great response from the market on it and the idea from the beginning, and I think we are very committed to it, and Automation Anywhere is to create opportunity for automation for everyone. >> That's great. So, last question Neeti, what are you working on in 2019, I mean I don't expect you to raise another half a billion dollars, great year from last time, what are some of your priorities though as we look at the balance of 2019? >> I think this industry is under tremendous growth, I think we are seeing a lot of results, for the customers and for employees, and so we are very very excited, I think it's a great time for the industry, it will create a lot more innovation, we'll have a lot more new things coming out this year, a lot more engagement from all over the world, and it's a super exciting time to be in this industry. >> Great. Well thanks for taking a few minutes out of your busy day and for having us back here at the show. >> Absolutely, my pleasure, Jeff. >> She's Neeti, I'm Jeff, you're watching The Cube, where Automation Anywhere Imagine 2019 in midtown Manhattan. Thanks for watching, see you next time. (energetic music)

>> From New York City, it's theCUBE! Covering Automation Anywhere, Imagine. Brought to you by Automation Anywhere. >> Welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, we're in Midown Manhattan at Automation Anywhere Imagine 2019. We were here last year, it's about 1,500 people who are excited to be back, the RPA space is really, really hot as evidenced by tons of investment coming into it and we're excited to have the CEO, fresh of the keynote but here Shukla the CEO and co-founder of Automation Anywhere. Great to see you and great job on the keynote. >> Thank you, great to see you too. >> Yeah, so I wanted to jump into some of the top level themes that you outlined that I think are so important and one of them was this whole concept of democratization of automation. We hear about it in Big Data, we hear about it at citizen developers and you guys are taking it really into the automation space and you had three things that were really important. One, it has to work for anyone. It's got to be available anywhere, which implies on anything. And it has to be available to any company, regardless of size. It sounds like you've really baked those concepts into a lot of the announcements that you've had today and where you're taking the company. So I wonder if you can dive a little bit deeper as to why those are guiding principles. >> Absolutely. I think what guides us there is that we believe that the power of technology lies when it impacts the lives of millions of people and makes them better. So you if you start with that premise, how do you make that possible. Now when you look at any technology that has affected, made millions of lives better, they had these three characteristics in common. Take an example of a personal computer or internet. It was available to anyone, for any kinds of people, any profile of people. It was available anywhere in any device and it was available for any sized company. So we have seen this play out a few times in our lifetime so, we have learned from that, that if our mission is to make power of RPA and AI reach millions of people and make their lives better, if that's the mission then we have to make this possible for anyone, for anywhere and for any sized company. >> And a big piece of that was the announcement of the community version which is free. So I'm sure there were some interesting discussions about moving to a freemium model and actually giving the software free for people that qualify. I wonder if you can talk about those discussions and clearly there's a bigger picture that you're focused on, versus just the revenue for one or two small customers. >> Right, so our community edition is free for small businesses, student and individual developers. And the reason why we did this is for two reasons. One is, we believe the students are our future and they will take this technology forward and we need more and more people with digital skills. So it seemed like the right place to invest and enable them with the next set of technologies. The reason to make it available free for developers is, we believe that today about 95% of processes that we automate are the processes that we do manually today. But that is changing very fast. In three to five years, 30% of things that we will automate will be the things that are not part of our lives today. It is things that we don't know yet, right? >> Right, right. >> And that happens every time. The way we use phones and everything, nobody could've predicted this. So we know that will happen like it happened in internet and other evolution. It will happen in our space as well. And developers are an amazing asset, they are the ones who will discover, find these new ways that none of us know about and they will create this new future in front of our eyes. So it makes sense to empower developers and especially developers are very picky, they want the best software available. They won't settle for anything less and because we have the complete intelligent digital workforce platform that includes the best RPA, artificial intelligence and analytics, (coughs) we thought they would love the power of this combined platform that is not available anywhere else. And true to the cause, as soon as we announced it we had an amazing success. The requests are pouring in from 120 countries worldwide and the adoption has been phenomenal. >> And you mentioned that on stage on the keynote that there's some examples out there where people are not doing automating of processes that they already did but are really starting to get creative in the uses of this tool and I think we see it over and over as you said, people miss the hype recurve, it's hard to see the future and it's hard to apply what we're doing today to what we're going to be doing in the future, because we really don't know. >> That's right. I think sometimes I describe this way to people, that when the new technology comes, people think that new technology is the train and the world is the stations. So the station remains where it is and the tain moves on, right? That's not how real world is. The real world is, the world is a train itself, that's moving forward and technology is one of the, you can say it's the first-- >> The locomotive. >> First locomotive or one of the pieces in it. But the whole world is moving as well. So we often, many of us get this wrong that, we make a mistake to think that, how will this new technology fill in a stationary world where that's not the case, the world is moving. >> The other thing you brought up I thought was pretty interesting is that, this is not to displace workers, it's to enable workers to do better and I couldn't help but think of, just like my PC helps me do my job better, the internet helps me do my job better, my phone and my ERP system all help me do my job better. So, of course, why wouldn't I want a powered AI assistant to help me do my job better. >> That's absolutely true. Look, I have a very extraordinary privilege of seeing this transformation through the eyes of thousands of people who use our platform every day, and I've visited about, of the 2,800 plus customers we have, I have visited hundreds of them and talked to thousands of people on the ground who use this technology. And there is not a single one of them who would go back. And I invariably ask that, after a few discussions I would say "Would you ever consider going back?", and the answer is universal across any country, any verticle. People do not want to go back to, why would you, why would you do a robotic job? And so, it is more clear than ever before that this transformation is certainly not about us, certainly not about bots. It is about empowering people so that they're more productive unlike any other time in human history. Taking it a step further, as you said, compared to where PCs brought us. >> You said, again I could go on your keynote all day long, another great thing you brought up which was just crushing, I think you said that 4% of people have jobs that need some degree of creativity. That is horrible! >> Is it not? Is it not? >> That is horrible. And again to personalize it, you talked about your kids and this world that they're going to be coming into, why would we want to put them into a robotic job? >> Right. So the data shows that only 4% of US jobs require medium creativity. And as a parent that is, I'm troubled by it because we, like all parents, we tell our children they can do anything. What do we mean by they can do anything? If they get one of those 4% jobs, that's still a medium level of creativity so probably we hope they get 4.1% of those jobs that require full human capacity, yeah? >> Right, right. >> That's not anything they can do. They don't have as many opportunities that they should have. And I think we need to create a better world with more opportunities for our children. I'll settle at 40% but 4% isn't acceptable. >> So a little bit about the business, cause the deeper stuff I think is more interesting, but the business is doing well, again. Since we last met you had this huge A round, I think someone said "The largest A round ever.". You put over half a billion dollars into the bank. A, what is that show in terms of validation from the marketplace, for the opportunities you guys are addressing? And then B, with great resources comes great responsibility, you know? So what are you doing next as you look into 2019, what are some of your top priorities? >> So we have been very fortunate to get the, as you mentioned about 550,000,000 in our series A round and it is, if not the largest, one of the largest series A round ever. I think it shows, first of all it's a validation of our market leadership and the growth of the category both. We continue to invest heavily in three areas. First is our RND investment continues to grow, especially in AI and making RPA accessible to millions. So those investments continue. We are significantly investing in the global expansion across, now we have offices in about 30, 35 countries worldwide. And the third is, we will carefully look at acquiring maybe new technologies and new acquisitions to make our digital labor platform more complete and offer customers more similar solutions. >> Right. So last question before I let you go, I know they got you flying back to back to back all day. It's really about the ecosystem. The Partner Ecosystem, you've got obviously a bunch of system integrators here which validates that they see a huge opportunity, but talk about how you're developing an ecosystem to extend the reach beyond just the people that work at Automation Anywhere. >> So we have two important pillars to our ecosystem. We have our site system integrators. We bought 700 plus partners who provide invaluable experience in various domains all over the world. Many of them provide the bots and the bot store that are domain specific, process specific, ready to tax and audit and finance and accounting and supply chain and oil and gas and telcos, across all industries. So they bridge the gap between technology and the customer specific, domain specific process. That's one very important pillar. The second important pillar is the software companies. So we have a great deal of partnerships with many of them, for example we have a continued partnership with IBM, with their digital business automation group. We recently announced partnership with Workrave that is very important to us. It has an enormous potential of how when you combine best in class, HR and cloud finance with best in class intelligent digital workforce. The possibilities of value creation is enormous. We today announced our partnership with Oracle and we extended our partnership with Microsoft on multiple fronts, and there are many more as well. So the two key pillars to our creating an ecosystem. Again, all of this is, almost everything that we do comes down to a single mission statement which is, how do we take the power of RPA and AI to millions of people and make their life better? >> Great, great mission. So again, thanks for having us. Congratulations on a great event and we look forward to watching the next year unfold. >> Thank you, I look forward to it (laughter) >> Alright he's been here, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCube. We're at Automation Anywhere Imagine 2019 in Midtown Manhattan, thanks for watching. We'll see you next time.

>> From New York City, it's the cube, covering automation anywhere, Imagine brought to you by automation anywhere. >> Hey welcome back everybody Jeff Rick here with theCUBE. We're in midtown Manhattan at the automation anywhere, imagine 2019 event we were here last year, it's grown quite a bit and we're excited to be back. Our very first guest of today is Kashif Maboob, he is the VP Product Marketing and Global Head of our PA at automation anywhere. Great to see you. >> Nice to be here. >> Yeah so a year ago, in June I looked up the date and since June you guys have had a very exciting year, you raised like a half a billion dollars the RPA space is blowing up and this conferences I think outgrowing the venue so it's been quite a years. >> It certainly has been quite a year, yes we did have the largest Series A for a enterprise software company ever we are still on the Series A which is quite significant in our industry at the moment, the growth has been phenomenal, last year when you and I met here we had nine offices we have 35 offices today we have... we are looking at exiting 2019 with about 3,000 employees the numbers just speak for themselves. RPA that category itself has been at a growth space that I certainly have never seen before. >> So here had a great keynote a little bit earlier and he touched on a couple of really key topics and he did this last year too when he talked about, truly transformational technology shifts. And he talked about mobile before and personal computing and some of these things and he had three kind of things, it has to work for everyone it must be available anywhere and it must work for any size company and you guys are making real concrete moves into that area and one thing he talked about, is this concept of community edition. So i wonder if you can give us a little bit more flavor what is community edition, why is it important automation anywhere? >> Absolutely the concept, the vision that we are driving towards, is automation for all. For all types of users, by that we mean business user, IT user, developer. You don't have to be somebody who is proficient at coding you don't have to be somebody who is doing just one part of the business. Anybody in the business should be able to pick up the software and start using it. So with that concept in mind, we then thought about all types of businesses. Because until not too long ago RPA was a realm for the largest of the large companies. So last year fourteen fifteen hundred of our enterprises that number has grown to about 2,800 now. Still some of the largest companies in the world. Now taking it further is also talking about the various channels through which we deliver our software. so not just on premises which is most of RPA today but going forward enabling cloud delivery models. So with all that combined what is the fastest way to get people started on it and that is to remove all barriers to remove all friction and that's where community Edition comes in. It's a free product, it is the entire digital workforce platform. So not just RPA but RPA with AI and with analytics all combined, with a mobile app ready system. So when you when you sign up or download, whichever way you want to call it. You are actually signing up into a very robust, very comprehensive the most complete digital workforce platform that enables business users, students, educators, but perhaps most importantly developers to start developing their own bots, their own software robots. A community edition is just one piece of a larger ecosystem strategy that we have, that includes the community edition. So download the software or sign up into it and start building, but where do you learn how to build bots? well, we have Automation Anywhere University. We have about 175,000 students signed up already. We're fast becoming the world's largest University as well and then... So you have free courses available, you can get certifications as a trainer as a developer, as a business user. Once you have that training you can start developing bonds. Let's say you have questions that you want answered or you feel like the expert who should be sharing his or her knowledge for that we have the A people community, it's again RPA's largest community in the world, seventy-five thousand plus users already so that's piece number three and last but not the least, you've downloaded the Community Edition, you've become proficient in building boards, you're sharing knowledge and your expertise what's the next step? The next step is to build bots that the rest of the world can use so we are we have bought stores that we launched last year >> right >> so you can actually upload your bots and you will start monetizing the bots so it isn't a virtuous cycle, it's an ecosystem of free software, free education, free community, in a marketplace that lets you share your knowledge your expertise with the world. So that's our vision that's what we are very much into it and more than a vision it's in practice today. >> Right it's an interesting play right because we always hear about the democratization of data, and the citizen developer, so you guys are really talking about the democratization of automation and I'm sure there were some interesting conversations we're going to have the CFO on later, about you know taking some revenue off the table to enable kind of this community outreach to go out and offer really a full stacks almost like a freemium, classic kind of freemium play, to let people and as you said developers, schools, small businesses get involved in this. What if you could talk about kind of the strategic reason that you're giving up some short-term revenue for obviously a much potential bigger gain down the road. >> So a great point , if you look at the vision, the vision is to automate any process that can be automated right. Is to automate any process any organization that should be automated so what does that mean? That means an enormous workforce that is RPA ready. RPA educated that has knowledge of RPA and not just RPA but any automation per se because AI is included in here. >> Right >> So the only way we can reach that goal, of having millions and millions of users using not just our product, but any RPA product is to educate them to get products in their hands and so we can't think short term in that way. Our our vision is multi-decade vision. And its enormous vision as you as you heard also you mentioned so it's automation for all. For any business size and through any delivery channel >> Right >> And that's where the strategy is that's why we launched Community Edition and you will see a lot more coming down the pipeline as well >> Right So the next big theme is cloud right, we were both at the Google cloud show, last week there you got an announcement here about Oracle cloud and then here talked about, your guys own cloud so I wonder if you can talk a little bit about kind of the cloud strategy and then some of these different options that you guys are enabling for a cloud enabled version of automation anywhere. >> Absolutely so that's a big step just like freeing up our software, through community edition, we need to open a channel through which anybody can have software available so so you don't have just the option of on-premise software, but cloud ready web ready software so for that we announced today, the intelligent automation cloud. The the focus is simplicity, security and scalability. Those three things are critical for any business should be simple enough for anybody to use the software without having to download and install and maintain and so they're big huge cost IT costs for maintaining and price of it >> Right >> So removing that cost, that's what we mean by a zero footprint software it's simple but simple does not mean it's weak or its anything like that. Simple mean is powerful, easy enough to use, intuitive enough to use for a business user >> Right >> Who is who's expertise lives in the process, not necessarily in the coding and scripting environment >> Right >> On the other hand giving the the developers a very robust and IDE you know development environment so that all users, the business user the developer and the IT manager they all get the capability. Security is built-in. We cannot have robust security if you're dealing with world's largest financial organization nine out of ten largest banks, are already in business with us so security is paramount. Audit compliance is paramount >> Right >> Audit ease is paramount and last but not the least is the scalability. So cloud provides us and our customers infinite scale. So simplicity, security, scalability, delivered through cloud and an intelligent cloud not just a cloud that is basic, but cloud where AI is built in >> Right >> Where cognitive capabilities are built in so that's that's a vision that's the goal >> Right but it's and even more of that it's just choice right depending on what the customer needs what their particular application is, within a within a single customer or a single entity pick a large bank, they may have some implementations behind the firewall, on prem they might have some, on your cloud they might have some on some of these big public clouds. You're really offering now the choice it's not necessarily a locked in delivery strategy. >> So we are certified with the five largest cloud platforms available today. Whether it's Google, Oracle, Amazon Web Services, Azure, you will see Microsoft talking here today you will hear from IBM executives here today. Very close partnerships with these organizations >> Right >> So not only that we are technology partners, but we are certified with their cloud platforms which makes which gives our customers the peace of mind. >> Right >> That if we are certified, say with AWS Amazon Web Services, the security that's built into Amazon Web Services, the scalability that comes out of it, the 99.99% uptime and all of those amazing things that amazon has invested in >> Great >> Over the years and now available to our customers as well >> Right >> So that's that's an important factor. >> A lot going on since we last that down a year ago but let's let's look at forward again and I think I asked you last year, you know what are we going to be talking about 2019? So what's coming next? I mean you guys have a huge war chest, you're in a very hot space, you have a lot of momentum Like how you said you doubled your offices in a year, hiring like mad, so what's next? what are you what are you working on in the near term, and the mid term? >> So we started with Community Edition a month ago so in a month we have about 12,000 signups and downloads which is very significant for our enterprise business. It's from throughout the world but in a month's time we are coming out with one of our most the biggest releases if you will ever and that's where we introduce the cloud, that's where we introduce for the business user, a completely web-based interface, which is what we call bot sketch, that gives you the ability, to drag and drop and build your process and in the backend we will develop the bot the software robot for you so it's sort of a bridge between a business user, and she might be on the accounting side or billing side but she's the expert in knowing her own process but she's not a scriptor, she's not a coder she's not a developer, her area of expertise is is the process itself >> Right >> It could be a logistics process , it could be an HR process and she can sketch out their process just like building a workflow and once she finishes her work and she's complete with her workflow or her process end to end, the the development side can take over and the code is already written for them at that point the developer can bring in their own Python code, can run it on Linux, in IT is the third user of course and they can see the entire environment so we are launching an environment that is ready for business that's robust enough for for the developer and secure and gives peace of mind to the IT so that's a major release it of course comes with our built-in security, cloud management and all of that so >> Right >> That's what we are rolling up to and Community Edition is there and you will see more and more talk about digital worker, you earlier you saw me here and it described the digital worker, bot store is there, it's the first-ever automation marketplace so there are lots of firsts >> Right >> And there are lots of the biggest and the largest so we are running out of you know superlatives to use here. I'm in marketing of course, so I have to be careful what I what I come up with >> That's right there's people playing bingo probably so we have to careful that they don't fill up their card. I just want to give you the last take you know when we talk a year ago you talked about three things, about RPA by itself, no kind of cognitive automation and in incorporating you know machine learning and artificial intelligence and then smart analytics and as you're talking and I'm listening, you know I don't even necessarily need to build the body, I mean you just kind of built around the bot but now I can I can get somebody else's bot, now you're talking about actually building the bot for me so you you're leveraging a lot of these, core technologies to power the compute and cloud to actually help me build the bot, taking me one step further where I just need to know my process to be able to start to implement my own digital assistants and and add automation to my world. >> Absolutely so the story is not the bot, the story is always the customer, looking at the customers pain point and what can we do to solve that pain point. How can we make the process more efficient, better faster cheaper right so the bot is a vehicle for us to really enable our customers, to really simplify their lives so that as Mahir mentioned, we as humans can do more cognitive more intelligent work >> Right >> That's the vision >> Right >> and everything that we are announcing today, everything that we have done in the past 15 years that we've been business and our vision is all about you know a fanatical customer focus, we have a large partner base as well we work with largest advisories over 700 partners so if you look at the overall picture it's again building an ecosystem for our customers where they are not tied to one thing >> Right >> We are not we are trying to open it up it's an open platform, we work with best-of-breed, at the same time we provide our customers readiness with AI and security right out of the box as well if they already have a Best of Breed system installed, we will work with that, if they would like to work with our systems, we will work they have capability there so it's a it's a very open approach, it's a very flexible approach because there's no way we you cannot tie down your customer and expect them to stay with you. We want to enable them to automate their process in the most efficient way possible. >> Yeah well congratulations, it's quite a ride and I think the real fun stuffs just getting started. >> Yes absolutely thank you. >> All right thanks again. >> All right, he's Kashif I'm Jeff you're watching the cube were on a mission anywhere, imagine 2019 in midtown Manhattan. Thanks for watching, see you next time (upbeat music)

the problem people are trying to achieve is how to become a digital enterprise not just to automate but how do you create a digital enterprise you cannot become a digital enterprise unless your operations are digital you cannot make your operations digital unless your processes are digital and you cannot do that and let us say workforce is digital process automation helps get rid of the mundane and repetitive tasks but the ultimate goal is so that you can enable the humans to do more to enable a lot more creativity you're outside the box thinking we'll come up with new service models come up with new ways to solve things and this is only possible if you get rid of the repetitive mundane tasks which often block bounce down humans [Music] many more jobs we technically enable then will be eliminated by by technology there's gonna be some that are that are that are impacted more dramatically than others but I would I would actually say for most people the ability to have technology to help them do the day-to-day job is gonna have a much higher technology get adopted when you have to go and invest in it it takes passion you got to get people who believe people are committed people who want to go to do something come around like they have for all other things when computers came people had the same concern and Internet and ever I write I think in many ways this will help us help us improve our standard of living and take us to her [Music]

>> From Times Square, in the heart of New York City, it's theCUBE. Covering Imagine 2018. Brought to you by Automation Anywhere. >> Hey welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE. We're in Manhattan at the Automation Anywhere Imagine 2018. 1100 people milling around looking at the ecosystem, looking at all the offers that all the partners have. And we're excited to have one of the strategic advisors from the company, he's Bill Raduchel. Strategic advisor, been in the industry for >> 50 years, 40 years, 50 years, whatever. Forever. >> So Bill, thanks for takin' a few minutes. >> My pleasure. >> So how did you get involved with Automation Anywhere? >> Oh the way most things happen in life, friends, right? You get involved, and got to talking to Mihir, and we got, we see the world much the same way. And see the importance of bots and bringing productivity back to the economy. And no other way to do it. So just ya know, it grew. >> It grew. So it's interesting right? Cause I though ERP was supposed to have rung out all the efficiency that, and waste in the system, but clearly that was not the case. >> I won both CIO of the year and CTO of the year, and I put in an ERP system, and I understand it. It also failed three times going in. It was incredibly painful, but it produced over a billion dollars in cash saving. So it did. The problem is the world changes. And the world changes now at a pace far faster than you can possibly change your ERP system. >> Right. >> I mean ERP systems are built to be changed every I don't know, 15 to 25 years. And the world in 25 years is gonna look very different than the world does today. So we just have a huge disconnect between how fast we can create and deploy software, and how fast the world is changing to which that software has to relay. >> Right. And still so many of the processes that people actually do in their day job, are still spreadsheet based, you know, my goodness. How much of the world's computational horsepower is used on Excel on stand alone little reports and projects? >> Another question to ask is how many errors are in those spreadsheets? >> That's right. Not enough copy paste. >> I mean, I was on a study for the National Academy of Sciences, and we looked at why productivity growth wasn't happening. And one answer, which we just talked about, is Legacy software. I mean, you just couldn't change it, you couldn't, you know when you had to rewrite the software all productivity growth just slowed to a crawl. The other thing is something that economists call lore. And lore is basically oral tradition. But it's the way the company really works. >> Right. >> You have all these processes and all these procedures but when you get down and you start talking and sort of like, what is it the secret boss show? I mean, you learn the little things that the people down at the bottom know. Well, so far, Automation has never really penetrated that. And yet that becomes the barrier to almost all change. So what RPA does, is RPA actually begins to go after lore. RPA allows companies to begin to understand lore, and understand how to optimize it. Understand how to record it. I mean, you know, it's not written down. It's below the level that people bother to document and yet, if you don't change the lore, you're not gonna matter. >> You're not changing anything. >> You're not changing anything. So this is why this is so exciting because for the first time, companies, organizations, people, I mean we see all this stuff coming out just to help us in our everyday lives. You get to go at the lore. I mean, you know that, well you don't put that field in, no you wait 20 seconds after you filled in this field before you go and do that, because it takes that long for that and you get an error over here. That's how things really work. And this is the kind of technology that can actually address that. And so for that point of view it's really revolutionary because we've never been able I mean, oral tradition has never been subject to a whole lot of scientific studies. >> Well the other thing is just so impressive when you've been in the business a long time, you know we're talking about AOL before we turn on the cameras and shipping CDs around. >> Right. >> As we get closer and closer to ya know, infinite compute, infinite storage, infinite networking, 5G just around the corner. At a price point that keeps absutodically getting closer and closer to zero, the opportunity for things like AI, and to really apply a lot more horsepower to these problems, opens up a whole different opportunity. >> Two comments to that. One is, about 15 years ago the National Science Foundation funded Monica Lamb at Stanford to do a project on the open mobile internet, POMI. And one of their conclusions was that at some point in the future, which may be happening now, we would all have a digital butler. And everybody would have, basically a bot. They would be living 24/7 operating on our behalf, doing the things that help make our life better. And that is you know, really what's gonna happen. Now you see AI, and if you saw there was a report that got a lot of news from the speech given at the Federal Reserve Bank at Dallas, I think. Where the guy said well productivity is fine, it's just that the AI technology hasn't been able to find a way to be effective, or made real. Well the way it's gonna be made real is these bots because you still got your ERP system. Now granted I can have AI over here, but if it doesn't talk to the ERP system, how is the order gonna get placed? How is the product gonna get mailed? How is it gonna get shipped? So something has to go bring these together. So again, you're not gonna have impact from AI unless you have an impact from bots. Because they're the interface to the real world. >> Well the other huge thing that happened, right, was this mobile. And the Googles and the Amazons of the world resetting our expectations of the way we should be interacting with our technology. And you know, it's funny but there's little things that are in our day all the time. I mean, Ways is just a phenomenal example, right? And auto fill on an address. You know, this is the address you typed in, this is the one that USPS says is the official address from your home. So it's all these little tiny things that are just happening >> Spell check. >> Without even, spellcheck. >> Spell check, I mean, the inventor of spell check is John Seely Brown. And he was giving a speech at the University of Michigan 15 years ago and the graduates weren't pleased. Here was a computer scientist gonna come talk to them and it's at the Michigan stadium, and they're throwing beach balls and no one's paying any attention. And the person who introduced him said and I wanna introduce John Seely Brown, the man who invented spell check. And he had a standing ovation from 100,000 people because that got their attention. They all knew that that was really important. No you're right. I mean, the iPhone is 10 years old. Well I mean smart phones are 20 years old. The iPhone is 10 years old, 10 and a half now. I mean, it's changed how we live our lives, how we do business, how everything goes. Anybody who thinks that the next 10 years is gonna be less change >> No, it's only accelerating. >> There's so many vectors. I mean a year ago, a friend coined the Cambric Extinction, basically a play on words on the Cambrian Extinction. And it's Cloud, AI, mobile, big data, robotics, Internetive things, and cyber security. And he pointed out that any one of those would be incredibly disruptive, they were all hitting at the same time. The thing that's amazing is that's a two year old comment. Block chain wasn't around. >> Right. >> And today, block chain may be more disruptive than any of those. And yet, how do all of those connect to the Legacy systems for some long period of time? It's what's going on in this room. >> Right. Well cause I was gonna ask you, cause you advise a ton of companies, so you've seen it and you continue to see it across a large spectrum. What's special about this company? what's special about this leadership team that keeps you excited, that keeps you involved? >> It's the people side of this, right. I mean, I have been to more computer related conferences in my life than I can count. I've never seen as much enthusiasm as there is here. Maybe, at a Mac conference. But I mean it's that same level of enthusiasm, it's passion. How does technology get adopted when you have to go invest in it? It takes passion. You gotta get people who believe. People who are committed. People who wanna go and do something with it. And that's what they've been able to do. That's what Mihir has done. And it's been brilliant in bringing that on board. >> Yeah, you can certainly feel it here in the room. Especially when it's still relatively intimate. >> Right. >> You know, people are sharing ideas, you know they're excited. It's really not kind of a competitive vendor fair, it's more of a community that's really trying to help each other out. >> Well that, I mean, they're at that stage. It may get a little bit, you know this, well no I'm not gonna tell you about my bot. It's a great bot and it does great things, but nope, I'm not gonna tell you how it works. >> Right. So just last parting word, you know as you see kind of the bot economy. We've seen they got the bot store, I guess they have a hundred bots, they've only had it open for a very short period of time. You can buy, sell, free. What do you see kind of the next short term evolution of this space? >> I think that bots are probably worth somewhere around a point in productivity growth. Well, a point >> Not a basis point, but a point point. >> A point. That's what Makenzie says, that's what, I mean because this is allowing you to capture benefits that you should of and you haven't. A point in global productivity is about a trillion dollars. So then your question for the bot economy is okay, if the value of the bots is a trillion dollars, what portion of that can the bot economy capture? And that you know, I mean 20 30 percent is certainly a reasonable number to go look at. The real world lives over here, all this technology change lives over here, and bots are gonna be the bridge by which you bring those two things together. So yes, it should be big and growing for a long time. >> Well Bill, thanks for taking a minute. I really appreciate the conversation. >> Great, thank you. >> Alright, he's Bill, I'm Jeff. You're watchin' theCUBE from Automation Anywhere Imagine 2018. Thanks for watching. (electronic music)

>> From Times Square, in the heart of New York City, it's theCUBE. Covering Imagine 2018. Brought to you by Automation Anywhere. >> Welcome back everybody, Jeff Frick here with theCUBE, we are at Automation Anywhere in midtown Manhattan, 2018, excited to have our next guest, he's Kevin Kroen, he's partner of financial services, intelligent automation leader at PWC, Kevin, great to see you. >> Thank you. >> So financial services seems to be a theme, we're here in Manhattan, why is financial services an early adopter or maybe a frequent adopter or an advanced adopter of the RPA technology? >> Sure, so I think as we see our financial services clients and their agendas, there's been a huge focus on productivity and simplifying their overall operating model over the past couple of years. Banks in particular have gone through several years of having to focus their spending on non discretionary manners like regulatory compliance and risk management. And what that's generated is a need, as they started looking towards the next generation to really start thinking about what they're gonna look like in a post regulatory environment. And automation has quickly risen to the top of the agenda. >> What they're gonna look like in a post regulatory environment. >> Yes. >> Why a post regulate? >> Well I mean if you look through, you know what banks have had to deal with in term of Dodd-Frank, in terms of CCAR, you know, the regulation from federal reserve, these are things that took a lot of spending both on implementing operational processes and on implementing technology. A lot of that work is starting to you know, the banks are putting that behind themselves and so as they look forward and look at how they're going to gain more profitability in the future, the challenge becomes, there's not necessarily a new set of product innovation coming in, and so you have to really look at the expense line. >> Right. >> And so because of that automation has risen to the top of that agenda and so this continues to be one of the top areas of interest that we're getting from our clients. >> Right, so when you say post regulatory, you mean like a new regulation that they have to respond to, not that they're suddenly not gonna be regulated. >> There's not a lot of new regulations coming in right now, especially- >> That pesky one last week, GDRP. >> Yeah but in the US we're in an environment right now, there was just, you know, the revisions to the Dodd-Frank bill that were passed a lot of regulatory rules were actually being loosened so you don't necessarily have an increase in dollars that are going to be going into that. >> Right right, so it just always fascinates me, right, I thought ERP was supposed to wring out all the efficiency in our systems but that was not the case, not even by a long shot and now we continue to find these new avenues for more efficiency and clearly this is a big one that we've stumbled upon. >> Yeah, you know I think it's interesting, when you look at big technology investment over the last decade or two, you could argue a lot of efforts been focused at what I call the kind of core infrastructure and core plumbing so you know, how do I consolidate data into a single location? How do I make sure that data reconciles into different parts of my organization but that like kind of last mile of what someone does as part of their day to day business process was never really addressed, you know or is only addressed in pieces, and so I think as you start looking at the productivity term and how you actually start getting efficiency, we have very few clients that are saying, I want to take on that next big ERP type of limitation or I'm ready to spend 300 million dollars on a new project, they're looking to try to get the most value out of what they already have and they're actually looking to look at that last mile and how can they actually gain some benefit off it so the RPA technologies I think we're one of the catalysts of just being the perfect technology in the right place at the right time from a current business environment, a current technology spend perspective. >> Yeah it's pretty interesting Mihir was talking about, you know one of the big benefits is that you can take advantage of your existing infrastructure, you know, it's not a big giant rip and replace project but it's, again, it's this marginal incremental automation that you just get little benefit, little benefit, little benefit, end of the day, turns into a big benefit. >> Yeah, and I think that's, you know, it's quick, it's fast, it's, you know it can be implemented in an agile manner and you know, our clients are continuously telling us over and over again, they're willing to invest, but they wanna invest where they're gonna see a tangible payback immediately. >> Right. >> And I think when you start to talk the concept of digital transformation, it can mean a lot of different things to a lot of different people but there are big picture changes that could be made, those may be longer term trends but they're more immediate things and more immediate benefits that could be gained and I think that's really the sweet spot of where RPA and Automation Anywhere fall into. >> I was just looking up Jeff Immelt in his key note said this is the easy fountain money of any digital transformation project, I think that was the quote, that you'll ever do. That's a pretty nice endorsement. >> Yeah and it's, as we go out, we talk to CFOs, COOs, CIOs, you know, it's, the value proposition is really attractive because, you know, there have been, there's a track record of failed, technology projects failed big transformation projects and, you know, no one wants to necessarily risk their career on creating the next big failure and so I think using technology like RPA almost as an entry point or kind of like a gateway drug into the digital world, see the benefits, start to understand what are some of the business problems and historical kind of, you know, things you're trying to untangle in your infrastructure, attack that and then, you know, start to layer on additional things on top of that, once you get good with RPA and then you can start figuring out, okay, that's they gateway to artificial intelligence, okay how do I start to apply AI across my organization? As you get beyond AI, okay, how do I get into, more advanced state infrastructure and you can start thinking about this world where you can, you know, rather than do the big, five year project where you're gonna try to solve world hunger, it gives you a chance to kind of incrementally go digital over time and I think that's definitely the direction we see a lot of our clients wanting to go in. >> Right, Kevin I want to get your feedback on another topic that came up again in the keynote, was just security, you know it was like the last thing that was mentioned, you know, like A B C D E F G and security, financial services, obviously security is number one, it's baked into everything that everyone's trying to do now, it's no longer this big moat and wall, but it's got to be everywhere so I'm just curious, from the customer adoption point of view, where does security come up in the conversation, has it been a big deal, is it just assumed, is there a lot of good stuff that you can demonstrate to clients, how does security fit within this whole RPA world? >> You know with security and I would just say the broader kind of risk management pieces to the operator infrastructure are one of the first questions we get asked and a highly regulated environment like financial services, you know, the technology is easy and powerful with RPA but you also have to take a step back and say okay, I can program a bot to go do anything in my infrastructure, and that could mean running a reconciliation or it could mean going to our wire system and trying to send money out the door. And so there's a lot of concern around, not only understanding the technical aspects to you know, how the tools work with different types of security technologies, but more looking at your approach to entitlements and your approach to how you actually manage who has access to code bots, deployed bots in production, the overtime, understand what happens, you know we did a presentation to a board of directors a couple months ago on kind of automation more broadly and you know this is, you know, senior level executives the first question we got was, you know, okay, how do I prevent the 22 year old kid that just came off of campus from building a bot that no one knows about, setting it loose in our infrastructure and it going rogue, right? And so I mean this group was pretty savvy, they caught onto it very quickly and you know, the CIO of this client was sitting next to me and she kind of didn't have an immediate answer to that and I think that was kind of the a-ha moment, this is something we really need to put some thought into around you know, who are we gonna let build bots, what policies are gonna be set around how bots get deployed into our production environment, how are we gonna monitor what happens? You know how are we gonna get our auditors, our operational risk folks, our regulators, how are we gonna get all our different stakeholder groups comfortable that we have a well controlled, well functioning bot infrastructure that exists? >> Right, cause the bots actually act like people, they're entitled as like a role right, within the organization? >> We have clients that have literally had to set bots up as new employees, like they get onboarded, they have a, you go to the corporate directory and you can see a picture of R2D2, right like and it's the way they get around how they get a bot intel to a system but it's still, it's not a human right, so you still have to have a policy for how you actually will get code that uses that bot entitlement to function right and so that has to be done in a well disciplined, well controlled manner. >> Right, because to give them the ability to provide information to help a person make a decision is very different then basically enabling them to make that decision and take proactive action. >> Exactly. >> Yeah, it's funny we talked to Dr. Robert Gates at a show a little while ago and he said the only place in the US military where a machine can actually shoot a gun is on the Korean border, but every place else they can make suggestions but ultimately it's gotta be a person that makes the decision to push the button. >> And we're seeing, you know, trying to equate that to financial services, you see a similar pattern where there are certain areas where people are very comfortable playing this technology, you know you get into accounting and reporting and you know more back office type processes, you got other areas that people are a little less comfortable, you know anything that touches kind of wire systems or touches things that, you know, going out the door, touches kind of core trading processes, things like that there's a different risk profile associated with it. I think the other challenge is too is RPA is getting the gateway drug into this going back to my previous point, as you start to layer additional technologies into this, you might have less transparency over understanding clearly what's happening, especially as artificial intelligence takes a much broader role in this and so there's gonna be a lot of scrutiny I think over the next couple years put into like how do I understand the models that are created by artificial intelligence technologies and those decisions that are being made because you, if your regulator says, okay, why did you make this decision, you have to be able to explain it as the supervisor of that intelligent bot, you can't just say, oh it's cause what the machine told me to do, as so, that'll be one of the interesting challenges that's ahead of us. >> Yeah it's good, I mean it's part of the whole scale of conversation, I had interesting conversation with a guy, talking about really opening up those AI boxes so that you have an auditable process, right, you can actually point to why it made the decision even if you're not the one that made it in real time and it's doing it really really quickly so. >> Exactly. >> Really important piece. >> Yeah and as PWC, it's one of our challenges, as a consultant I'm helping clients implement this, my colleagues in our audit practice are now grappling with that same question because we're increasingly being asked to audit that type of infrastructure and have to prove that something did what it was suppose to have done. >> Right, right, alright Kevin, well nothing but opportunities for you ahead and thanks for taking a few minutes to stop by. >> Okay, thank you for having me. >> Alright, he's Kevin, I'm Jeff, you're watching theCUBE from Automation Anywhere, Imagine 2018 in Manhattan, thanks for watching. (upbeat music)