It’s hard to believe that I founded Deep Analysis five years ago (almost to the day). It’s hard to believe we made it this far and that we are looking forward to the next five. But maybe what is hardest to grasp is just how much our industry has changed over these past few years. …
This was a bullish briefing from Blue Prism. SS&C paid $1.65 billion, so we expected nothing less than a moon shot effort. Of course, the proof will be in the pudding, as a lot of product integration promises were made and there is still much work to do here. It’s also hard to imagine that this is the last acquisition SS&C will make. Will the portfolio grow even further with a process intelligence/mining addition on the horizon?
But beyond the expected announcements, Appian World was an interesting reflection on the pandemic years and its impact on IT and IT vendors. For Appian, this period has delivered a rocket-sized boost to their business growing around 20% year on year.
Microsoft recently acquired the processing mining vendor Minit. We looked closely at Minit a little while back, and you can read our report on the company and its technology here. In our estimation, this is one of the best small acquisitions Microsoft has made in quite some time.
Gartner has dropped its Magic Quadrant (MQ) for Content Services; it’s a big event in a relatively small world.
Every month or two, we do a quick round-up of the deals in the Information Management and Automation sector that caught our eyes. So much activity is a sign of health and strength in the industry.
Before the pandemic, buyers were assailed by market and sales efforts from RPA and AI document automation vendors alike, which naturally spiked some interest. But the pandemic has driven a more rational reason growth of interest.
OCR and RPA are becoming commodities, but that does not mean the end of capture and process management vendors. Instead, it means it’s time for them to consolidate, hunker down or pivot to new markets.
It is worth noting, that what OpenText is doing is in stark contrast to its nearest competitor Hyland (backed by PE firm Thoma Bravo). That has over the past couple of years acquired a blockchain startup (Learning Machine), an RPA vendor (Another Monday) along with open source DAM/ECM vendors (Nuxeo & Alfresco).
All in all quite month of activity, but all of course, overshadowed by the UIPath IPO. It will be interesting to see how this impacts the enterprise automation market in the short and long term. Undoubtedly some of the money raised, possibly much of the money, will go toward multiple acquisitions.
