Automation for all. While this may seem like a dream, Automation Anywhere Inc. is working to make it a reality through its initiative to bring automation to everyone — not just larger corporations or enterprises.

“The vision that we are driving towards is automation for all,” said Kashif Mahbub (pictured), vice president of marketing at Automation Anywhere. “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.”

Mahbub spoke with Jeff Frick (@JeffFrick), host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s mobile livestreaming studio, during the recent Automation Anywhere Imagine event in New York City. They discussed ways Automation Anywhere is helping everyone achieve automation (see the full interview with transcript here). (* Disclosure below.)

Helping all achieve automation through community platforms, education

Not too long ago, robotic process automation was only available to the largest companies in the world. But the demand for RPA has grown quickly. Automation Anywhere has expanded rapidly from nine offices to 35 offices in just a year’s time, and expanding RPA is the company’s main goal. It wanted to make sure that any-sized company or any individual could leverage RPA, because this is key to the success of automation worldwide, according to Mahbub.

“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,” Mahbub said. “And so we can’t think short term in that way. Our vision is a multi-decade vision.”

Automation Anywhere has recently launched a new version of its RPA platform called Community Edition, which gives access to its most advanced RPA platform to small businesses, students and developers. Community Edition is not just RPA; it’s RPA with AI and with analytics all combined into a mobile app-ready system.

“It’s a free product; it is the entire digital workforce platform,” Mahbub described. “So when you when you sign up or download … 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 software robots.”

The Community Edition is just one part of the mission. Automation Anywhere also has Automation Anywhere University, which has about 175,000 students signed up already, to help people learn how to build their own bots.

“So you have free courses available, you can get certifications as a trainer as a developer, as a business user,” Mahbub stated. “Once you have that training, you can start developing bots. The next step is to build bots that the rest of the world can use.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of Automation Anywhere Imagine. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for Automation Anywhere Imagine. Neither Automation Anywhere, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE