Marketplace update means more specific UiPath solutions

UiPath enterprise users can expect a proliferation in custom and industry-specific business solutions with changes to the UiPath “Marketplace” – the home of RPA listings that extend the UiPath platform.

The robotic process automation (RPA) leader, which tells partners it owns 34% of the market, has added a built-in quote engine to make it simpler for vendors to set custom pricing, extending this to include professional services. It made procurement processes easier with integration enabling a fast start where UiPath has an established relationship with an enterprise. To provide enterprises with confidence, it added a “Business Solutions Validation” certification to support validated listings.

Now open for custom activity and business solutions

The Marketplace is now open for custom activity (solutions built using a .NET library that can be installed and dragged and dropped into the UiPath Studio) and for full-blown business solutions (modern enterprise apps built on the UiPath platform). The platform supports code, automation, data, tests, APIs, versioning, and configuration.
The intent is to make UiPath a more complete solution in the same way that Apple’s AppStore made the iPhone a more complete product—enabling the servicing of thousands of niche needs without the business having to build every solution.

Examples include “InstaBot for Oracle E-Business Suite (EBS) General Ledger” and “InstaBot for Oracle EBS Sales Order” from AuraPlayer, and “Service Virtualization & Testing for SAP” from Int4.

This is now a tried-and-tested strategy: Leave those working closest with the end users to shape the range of specific solutions each industry and function needs. The challenge in achieving the scale required for real traction is that you must 1) Provide an environment in which participants are motivated and incentivized to create, 2) Offer easy ways to create outcomes, and 3) Be ready to crank up the volume on success stories to attract consumers. UiPath has clearly worked on 1 and 2, and the firm is hardly a shrinking violet when it comes to blowing its own trumpet to meet condition 3.

A wide range of specialists are already signed up

UiPath’s market share should provide confidence that it can achieve the scale to succeed, as should a lineup of vendors already signed up. These include HFS Hot Vendors Invoke and qBotica, plus Roboyo, elementBlue, AuraPlayer, KTern, Sykes, Smartbridge, Boundaryless, Greenlight, INT4, and rapidMation, among others.
While this looks like a good start, with 19 business solutions already listed at the time of writing, it remains to be seen if global systems integrators (GSIs) and services giants will lend their weight (and solutions) to the Marketplace rather than stick with selling directly to their already large customer bases. Most are already UiPath Diamond Partners.

In comparison, Pega’s Marketplace includes solutions from some of its biggest partners, such as Cognizant, HCL, and Capgemini.

The Bottom Line: To find best-fit UiPath solutions, try the Marketplace, but stay close to your GSI partners, too.

The challenge for UiPath now is to choose. Does it encourage the global systems integrators to provide business solutions through the Marketplace and deliver scale? Or does it keep them out and allow smaller specialists in the space to flourish? In the meantime, enterprises will need to stay close to relevant client partners in the GSIs and conduct regular Marketplace searches to source the specific UiPath solutions they may need.