Open-source software provider Camunda is an emerging player in the RPA market that involves using software robots to observe workflows in common business applications and then deduce ways to automate repetitive tasks for workers.
Yesterday, Camunda announced that it has completed an €82 million (roughly $100 million) funding round led by global venture capital and private equity firm Insight Partners. The round also included existing investor Highland Europe.
Camunda is fairly unique in the RPA market in that its platform is based on an open-source architecture that enables enterprises to design, orchestrate, monitor, and analyze their robots. In effect, Camunda’s software introduces a lifecycle-based approach to business process automation that enables firms to create and orchestrate whatever RPA tools they need and migrate them to more robust application programming interfaces that can scale as required.
The company does this because it says that most of the RPA bots used in the enterprise today are “fragmented and fragile”, citing a 2020 survey of process automation professionals that found 90% of them admit to facing challenges with their deployments. Camunda says the problem is that enterprises have introduced too many RPA bots into their information technology environments. That has led to an overwhelming level of complexity and technical debt that many organizations cannot overcome, Camunda says.
Camunda’s platform helps overcome those problems by enabling companies to monitor, alert and analyze RPA bot activity centrally across their entire organization. They can then orchestrate multiple RPA bots and their activities to get more value from them and replace those bots with modern APIs and microservices to reduce technical debt.
Camunda says its approach has proven popular, with big enterprises such as Allianz SE, Intuit Inc., and Vodafone Group Plc, all cited as customers. The company claims to have enjoyed its best-ever year in 2020 too, despite the global market challenges presented by the COVID-19 pandemic, though it didn’t provide absolute revenue numbers.
“This investment, along with Insight Partner’s expertise in scaling world-class software companies, will support our global go-to-market strategy, drive product innovation even faster and help build our leadership position in a quickly evolving process automation market.”
Jakob Freund, Co-founder and CEO, Camunda
