UiPath announced on Tuesday that it acquired Cloud Elements, a venture-backed startup with a software platform for companies looking to integrate their business apps. UiPath did not disclose the terms of the deal.
UiPath received a $35 billion valuation this year after its latest funding round, making it one of the most valuable robotic process automation companies in the world.
It said that Cloud Elements brings technology that will advance its efforts to deliver what it calls API-based automation. The technology that connects business apps seems to be important for this to happen.
Cloud Elements’ offering
A business could want to connect sales automation tools with analytics from marketing and synchronize records between the two departments. For this to happen, integration is required to create a bridge between the application programming interfaces of the workloads to be integrated.
Cloud Elements reduces the level of manual work one needs to put in to create API integrations. It comes with more than 200 pre-packaged API connectors for apps like Salesforce, Microsoft, SAP, and others.
The startup removes the need for software teams to build connectors from scratch.
Interface and API
UiPath says that the startup’s tech will help it provide more API-based automation features for its customers. RPA products like UiPath’s platform, use AI to create bots for task automation. Most of the time, the bots don’t use the API of the app they are trying to automate, relying on the user interface instead.
They look at what employees do to complete a certain task and then replicate the same workflow. Using Cloud Elements’ features, UiPath will make it easier for customers to build automation bots that use the app’s interface and API to learn, giving RPA projects a much-needed learning advantage.
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