Blue Prism deal adds RPA to Tibco software product range

The investment firm behind Tibco has announced the acquisition of robotic process automation (RPA) business Blue Prism. Through the $1.5bn deal, Tibco will combine automation from Blue Prism with its data platform capabilities, to provide what Tibco CEO Dan Streetman described as “access to intelligent automation capabilities”.

The Blue Prism acquisition fits into Tibco’s vision of being a company focused on helping its customers get the most from their data.

Speaking at the opening of the Tibco Now virtual event, Tibco’s chief operating officer (COO), Matt Quinn, said: “The world in which we live is increasingly defined by data. You don’t just access data anymore, you are the data. Our mission is to help you solve the most complex data problems. Tibco has vastly upgraded our technology on how we deliver our vision.”

He described the products as comprising a “loosely coupled, tightly integrated platform” covering the full journey of data applications that connects any data to any source, at any scale and at any speed.

Speaking to Computer Weekly prior to the Tibco Now virtual event, Tibco’s chief technology officer, Nelson Petracek, said many businesses had created big data problems that they now need to fix.

“Organisations went into a big data rabbit hole, all have big data problems, they know they need to do better, make it high quality and provide self-service capabilities,” he said.

The ability to provide application programming interfaces (APIs) and code snippets to help developers access certain chunks of data enables composable enterprise applications. This is now being fleshed out through the Blue Prism deal.

Gartner’s Magic Quadrant report for robotic process automation, published in July 2021, classifies Blue Prism as a leader with 168,000 active RPA users, including more than 2,000 enterprise customers with bots in production environments.

However, according to Gartner, Blue Prism has been slower than some of its competitors to expand its capabilities into complementary areas, such as low-code application development and API integration. These are two areas Tibco Software caters for in its product portfolio.

Tibco also offers Project Discover, a process mining tool built on the Tibco Connected Intelligence platform, which it said enables customers to discover, learn, improve and predict process behaviours from data event logs produced by operational systems. Process mining helps organisations gain a full understanding of the processes that support their customers. According to Tibco, this understanding is a key prerequisite to successful digital transformation programmes.

As part of its strategy to support data-driven applications, Tibco Software has expanded its Connect portfolio with updates to integration, API management and messaging. According to Tibco, the enhancements provide a way for customers to connect, compose and deliver any application, data source and device.

“A connected digital business requires accelerated development and connectivity to reach its full potential,” said Randy Menon, senior vice-president and general manager, Connect and Cloud, at Tibco.

“We’re raising the bar by accelerating digitally native business priorities and giving anyone in an organisation the power to do so,” he said. “We offer a single, cohesive platform that supports the adaptability required by digital businesses, helping organisations capitalise on data and insights to make predictions in real time.”