(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)