UiPath is expanding its robotic process automation (RPA) platform with new features that will appeal to CIOs, including enhanced security, cloud-native delivery models, and automation capabilities via UI and APIs.
Security components are delivered through a partnership with CrowdStrike, while API automation is the result of UiPath’s March 2021 acquisition of Cloud Elements.
A recent survey by IDG Research found that many IT organizations are not interested in RPA, despite the growing desire to manage business processes and automate workflows. UiPath moves the stack towards more sophisticated API automation capabilities, and the partnership between workflow automation platform ServiceNow and process mining specialist Celonis is a sign that automation vendors are working to address a broader range of concerns from CIOs.
The fall 2021 release of the UiPath RPA platform will allow users to drive applications through APIs as well as user interfaces and combine the two methods within the same automation. There are 70 pre-built connectors by the end of the year, with more to come.
Param Kahlon, UiPath Chief Product Officer, said, “We are creating all APIs, connectors, and all authentication protocols that support these connectors and cloud connectivity natively within the UiPath design environment. “Now we can construct business processes or workflows that use a combination of APIs, UI automation, and machine learning predictions all at once.”
Previously, the UiPath agent had to run on a Windows machine, but now all execution can actually happen in a Linux-based container, allowing it to scale over time as you use it. “
Cloud automation
UiPath has delivered its entire platform to more than 2,500 customers in SaaS mode, tailoring its entire platform to a cloud-native delivery model, Kahlon said. To this end, UiPath has developed specialized management and deployment tools that customers package into Kubernetes deployments running on their private cloud or on-premises.
“This will not only reduce the cost of running the platform, but will also give our customers the same consistent and uniform experience that they choose to deploy on-premises or choose the cloud version of our product,” he said.
Users can now be concerned about security as UiPath’s agents can now run anywhere and data can be accessed from virtually anywhere via these cloud connectors. How can you ensure that agents are not misused to access data?
“We want to make sure that the robot is compliant with the same policy or a more stringent policy,” Kahlon said. “For example, you might want to allow an employee to access their confidential information stored on SharePoint and you don’t want a robot to access that information. What do you do.”
UiPath’s answer to this is an engineering partnership with CrowdStrike, which allows CrowdStrike’s Falcon endpoint security tools to monitor and, if necessary, restrict what data UiPath agents can access, and allow UiPath users to get more detailed reports. what the agents did. When the latest version is released (October 25, 2021 for UiPath and early November for CrowdStrike), joint customers of the two companies will be able to use the new features by simply linking the two products.
“You, as a policy administrator, decide what is considered a threat activity. What our customers can do with this combined solution is to monitor robot activity and be alerted when a robot does something that isn’t in accordance with policy or its behavior appears to be different than expected,” said Kahlon.
One possible application is on a computer running Microsoft PowerShell. “This is a very powerful tool that gives you admin rights to your system. The robot can say that PowerShell privileges are not available, so if someone builds a script that causes the robot to call something from PowerShell, the robot should stop executing those privileges,” he said.
UiPath has partnered with CrowdStrike on the security side, but is trying to build its own platform for other features, Kahlon said.
“Our focus is to take what RPA has done well and extend it to create an end-to-end platform that customers can use to discover processes and execute automations via API or UI or machine learning-based predictions. It’s about creating an engaging experience for the end product.”
Competitors like Celonis or ServiceNow do only a small portion of this work and are working together to build a more complete product, he said. “From our point of view, it’s confirming that what our customers are looking for is an end-to-end platform, not a piece.”
At the Forward IV user conference this week in Las Vegas, UiPath unveiled some of the other features it will add to the platform, including robotic auto-healing, which uses the platform’s IT automation capabilities to detect and fix problems in the runtime environment. A new framework for customizing solution templates and process mining.
Copyright © 2021 IDG Communications, Inc.