Salesforce-owned API-building company MuleSoft, the company it bought in 2018 for $6.5 billion, announced that it will purchase Robotic Process Automation (RPA) company Servicetrace for an undisclosed amount. The acquisition will complement MuleSoft’s application composition platform, explained executives.
Over the last couple of years, robotic process automation or RPA has been red hot with tons of investor activity and M&A from companies like SAP, IBM, and ServiceNow. UIPath had a major IPO in April and has a market cap of over $30 billion. And we often wondered when Salesforce would get involved, but today were proven otherwise as the company dipped its toe into the RPA pool, announcing its intent to buy German RPA company Servicetrace.
MuleSoft sells Anypoint, an application programming interface (API) development platform for building reusable connections between applications and data so developers can compose applications more easily. Salesforce acquired MuleSoft in 2018. Servicetrace offers the XceleratorOne RPA tool. RPA helps companies to automate manual processes by copying human activities, cutting down on manual labor and human error.
The Servicetrace tool enables companies to identify processes that would benefit from RPA and model them for automation. Servicetrace says that the tool can automate long, complex processes and connect artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for automated decisions. It also organizes those automations across a company and enables managers to assess the return on investment from automated processes.
The RPA product will integrate with Salesforce’s Einstein Automate solution, which already handles automation tasks for the company’s clients.
MuleSoft CEO Brent Hayward in an announcement said: “Our platform makes it easy to unlock and integrate data from anywhere — wherever it resides — and manage, monitor, secure, and govern that data at scale. MuleSoft will now also make it easy for line of business and knowledge workers to automate business processes and dramatically increase efficiency and speed.”
Servicetrace also offers automated software testing tools and application performance monitoring tools that use bots to monitor users’ experience across complex software architectures. The acquisition will close by the third quarter of Salesforce’s fiscal year, ending October 31, 2021.
