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UiPath is expanding its Robotic Process Automation (RPA) platform with new features it hopes will put it on the radar of CIOs, including improved security, a cloud-native delivery model and APIs, as well as through the UI Includes the ability to automate.
The security component comes through a partnership with CrowdStrike, while API automation is the fruit of UiPath’s acquisition of Cloud Elements in March 2021.
A recent survey by IDG Research found that many IT organizations are showing no interest in RPA, even as the appetite for business process management and workflow automation is growing. UiPath’s move to more sophisticated API automation capabilities — and workflow automation platform Service Now’s partnership with process mining specialist Celonis — is a sign that automation vendors are seeking to address the wider concerns of CIOs.
The Fall 2021 release of UiPath’s RPA platform will enable users to combine both methods, not only through the user interface, but also through the API, and within a single automation. There will be 70 pre-made connectors by the end of the year, with more to come.
“We are building all of the APIs, our connectors and all the authentication protocols that support those connectors and cloud connections that are natively available in the UiPath design environment,” said Param Kahlon, UiPath’s Chief Product Officer. “You can now build a business process or workflow using a combination of APIs, UI automation, and machine learning prediction all at once.”
Previously, the UiPath agent had to run on a Windows machine, but now, Kahlon said, “all this execution can actually happen in a Linux-based container, so it can scale over time as you’re using it.” Huh. “
automation in the cloud
Kahlon said UiPath has optimized its entire platform in a cloud-native delivery model, bringing it to more than 2,500 customers in SaaS mode. To do this, UiPath developed specialized management tools and deployment tools, which the company is packaging as Kubernetes deployments that customers run in their private cloud or on-premises.
“This reduces the cost of running the platform, but gives customers the same consistent and consistent experience choosing a cloud version of our product or deploying it on-premises,” he said.
With UiPath’s agents now able to run anywhere and access data almost anywhere, via those cloud connectors, users may be concerned about security: how can they ensure that the agents they use have access to their data? Won’t the access to the data be abused?
“You want to make sure the robots are following similar policies, or perhaps more stringent policies,” Kahlon said. “For example, you may want to allow employees to access their own confidential information stored in SharePoint, but you may not want a robot to have access to that information or, if a robot accesses it So you want to know when he accessed it and what it did.”
UiPath’s answer to that is an engineering partnership with CrowdStrike to make it easier to monitor CrowdStrike’s Falcon endpoint protection tool and, if necessary, limit the data that UiPath’s agents are able to access, and It is for UiPath users to get more detailed reports on what the agents did.
When the latest versions are released – on October 25, 2021, in the case of UiPath, and in early November for CrowdStrike – joint customers of the two companies only need to link their two products to enable the new capabilities. it occurs.
“You, as your policy administrator, decide what you consider to be threat activity. With this combined solution, what customers can do is be able to monitor robot activity when robots do something that is not in accordance with the policy. Receive an alert if it doesn’t happen as expected, or if the behavior isn’t as expected,” Kahlon said.
One possible application would be on machines running Microsoft PowerShell. “It’s a very powerful tool that gives administrative privileges to the machine. You might want to say that powershell privileges are not available to robots, so if someone creates a script that can get robots to invoke something in powershell So, you want to stop the robot from executing it,” he said.
Kahlon said UiPath has partnered with CrowdStrike on security, among other capabilities it is trying to build its own platform for.
“Our focus is on what we did well in RPA and expanded it to be an end-to-end platform that can be used to discover customer processes, drive automation through APIs or UIs or machine-learning-based predictions. can, and then be able to build engaging experiences around that end-to-end product. “
Competitors like Celonis or ServiceNow only do parts of those things and are partnering to create a more complete offering, he said. “From our point of view, it is an affirmation of the fact that what customers are looking for is an end-to-end platform unlike any of its pieces.”
at its Forward IV The user conference in Las Vegas, UiPath, revealed some other capabilities, including robotic auto-healing, which uses its platform’s IT automation capabilities to detect and fix issues in the runtime environment, and new solutions. template, and a new framework for customizing mining process.
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