IBM has acquired Brazil based robotic process automation (RPA) provider WDG Automation. Financial terms were not disclosed.
In today’s digital era, companies are looking for new ways to create new business models, deliver new services and lower costs. The need to drive this transformation is even greater now given the uncertainties of COVID-19. IDC predicts that by 2025, AI-powered enterprises will see a 100% increase in knowledge worker productivity, resulting in shorter reaction times, greater product innovation success and improved customer satisfaction.
When AI-infused automation is applied to business processes and IT operations, it can help shorten the time between identifying an issue and responding. This is critical as unforeseen IT incidents and outages, for example, can cost businesses in both revenue and reputation.
By embedding WDG Automation’s RPA capabilities into IBM’s existing AI-infused automation capabilities across business processes and IT operations, business leaders including Chief Operating Officers (COOs) and Chief Information Officers (CIOs) will have broader access to intelligent automation through software robots. The acquisition also will extend IBM Services’ ability to transform clients’ operations as RPA, analytics and AI bring more intelligence to the enterprise workflows that fuel adaptive and resilient businesses and helps to expand IBM’s capabilities for delivering automation pervasively across client organizations.
With the fruition of this acquisition, businesses will be able to efficiently re-engineer, optimize and standardize operations, while eliminating business processes and IT operations that are redundant or unnecessary. They can also quickly identify more granular opportunities for automation, including tasks that have many steps, as well as help ensure consistent and accurate data is being used across all tools and business functions, including customer service, IT, finance, HR, and supply chain.
“IBM already automates how companies apply AI to business processes and IT operations so they can detect opportunities and problems and recommend next steps and solutions,” said Denis Kennelly, General Manager, Cloud Integration, IBM Cloud and Cognitive Software. “With today’s announcement, IBM is taking that a step further and helping clients accelerate automation to more parts of the organization, not just to routine, but more complex tasks so employees can focus on higher value work.”
“Automation is crucial in the digital era, as businesses need to perform several repetitive or routine tasks, so that employees are able to focus on innovation. I’m incredibly proud of the role WDG Automation has played in the RPA market with a unified and integrated platform to help companies in Brazil increase their productivity,” said Robson Felix, Founder and CEO, WDG Automation.
IBM plans to integrate WDG Automation RPA into its capabilities for automating IT operations, specifically Watson AIOps and Cloud Pak for Multicloud Management. IBM Watson AIOps, for example, automates how CIOs self-detect, diagnose and respond to IT anomalies in real time. RPA can help close the loop and ensure consistent data across all tools that connect to Watson AIOps. This can increase data quality and improve the accuracy of AI, as well as the productivity of engineers involved.
The WDG Automation technology will join the IBM Cloud Integration organization and be available through IBM Cloud Pak for Automation on-premises, and in public or private cloud environments.
The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions. It is expected to close in Q3 2020.