UPDATED 13:04 EDT / NOVEMBER 12 2021

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UiPath details customer-centric approach to building its automation platform

Robotic process automation is a key direction many global organizations are taking with digitization efforts as they look to solutions providers for frameworks to enable this automation.

UiPath Inc. is embracing the challenge, ever refining its automation suite to embody the improvements sought by enterprise customers.

“As we’ve scaled, I think we haven’t lost that attribute for culture to make sure that we are continuing to innovate, continuing to make sure that we are delivering capabilities based on what our customers are demanding of us,” said Param Kahlon (pictured), chief product officer of UiPath Inc. “That’s been a core part of our strategy as well that we’re going to build what our customers ask for. And we’re going to learn from our customers.”

Kahlon spoke with Dave Vellante and Lisa Martin, co-hosts of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during last month’s UiPath Forward IV conference. They discussed the latest in UiPath’s automation efforts, its innovation strategy, and how its approach incorporates customer demand. (* Disclosure below.)

Interest in automation grows during pandemic

UiPath’s automation platform is an end-to-end solution that allows companies to automate a range of processes, from point-in-time tasks to long-running processes. Where it looks to differentiate is by incorporating both its on-prem and cloud-based customers into its release schedule.

“Our latest version release is 2021.10. And it’s one of two major releases this year. So we do a release in the first half of the year, and we do a release in the second half of the year. And this is how on-premise customers consume our software — the cloud customers get these capabilities more frequently,” Kahlon explained.

On-prem customers are given six cycles (over three years) to update to each new software release. However, according to Kahlon, most of the company’s customers get on board within the first 12 to 18 months of deploying a new version, because they can see the new suite of features on offer with each release.

Supporting customer demand to accelerate automation is built into UiPath’s operations, according to Kahlon, particularly after the COVID pandemic caused significant disruption to the global economy.

“The truth is we didn’t have to make fundamental shifts in our technology to be able to meet that demand, because the core underpinning of our technology was built on the premise that you are allowing a machine to mimic human behavior,” Kahlon stated. “The pandemic definitely accelerated  the demand for automation but hasn’t changed our roadmap to go in a different direction as we go there.”

This preparedness has made UiPath increasingly attractive in a post-pandemic market, according to Kahlon, who noted that COVID brought automation to the top of the priority list for information technology stakeholders.

“In the past, we sold a lot, and our values and messaging resonated a lot with line-of-business owners. But … as they started using more and more automation, the IT stakeholders are now a lot more interested in what we’re doing,” Kahlon said.

To that end, UiPath has worked to ensure stakeholder requirements, from running mission-critical workloads to compliance, governance to security. The company’s efforts to have a product meet all platform needs “out of the box, as opposed to having to bolt on” these capabilities is a top priority, according to Kahlon.

UiPath and CrowdStrike

Security is a major backbone that predicated the smooth functioning of the cloud. Therefore, automation solutions must be built to withstand attacks and other destructive scenarios. UiPath’s recent partnership with CrowdStrike Holdings Inc. and, more specifically, their endpoint security platforms signal the newfound attention to policy-based controls and access management for end users, according to Kahlon.

“CrowdStrike has done phenomenal work in security solutions to manage how employees are using, based on their profiles, different applications and different APIs as well. What we’ve done is we’ve taken the capability that they have built for the employee workforce and make sure that we can apply it to the robotic workforce that our customer is using as well.”

UiPath currently boasts over 9,000 customers on its automation platform. In April 2021, the company raised $1.3 billion in an IPO that pegged its valuation at $30 billion.

Watch the complete video interview below, and be sure to check out more of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage during UiPath’s Forward IV conference. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the UiPath’s Forward IV conference. Neither UiPath Inc., the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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