Category Archives: Automation

Much of the world may be well aware of the growth of technologies like artificial intelligence (AI), virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR), but the growth of edtech has been nothing short of emphatic as we continue to transition towards a more remote society.

Today, institutions across the educational sector are looking to adopt high-tech tools like AI, VR, and AR as a means of enhancing their quality of service as key curriculum tools.

The rise of edtech platforms like Duolingo, Udemy and Coursera accelerated rapidly in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic, and as individuals young and old continue to embrace digital transformation, the industry surrounding these leading companies continues to grow exponentially.

(Image: HolonIQ, used with permission)

As the table above shows, advanced technology is set to become deeply intertwined with education as the decade progresses, with AI and reality technology set to take centre stage with expenditure reaching $18.7 billion collectively by 2025. (Read also: The Top Ways to Use AI in Education.)

Digital transformation is helping institutions retire old ways of thinking and working in order to harness technology to transform institutional outcomes, said Susan Grajek, vice president of partnerships, communities and research for EDUCAUSE presenting at the 2021 EDUCAUSE conference. Institutions need to build the foundations of digital transformation through shifts in their culture, workforce and technology.

The coronavirus pandemic has changed trends around the world, accelerating the adoption of technology in various sectors, noted Maxim Manturov, head of investment research at Freedom Finance Europe. The education industry is no exception, it is worth noting that there were attempts to integrate technology into education before, but the pandemic has accelerated and strengthened this trend. This may increase the number of people willing to switch to online learning as it allows attending classes anywhere.

With edtech forecast to grow at an exponential rate in the wake of the recent acceleration towards digital transformation, lets take a deeper look at the emerging trends within education technology, and how theyll transform the future of learning.

According to a recent learning report conducted by Deloitte, 40% of all 21st Century skills are dependent on the personalization of education. Thanks to emerging edtech, students are now capable of receiving personalized content and adaptive learning plans as part of their preferences.

Edtech companies have been increasingly looking to establish a conducive learning environment for students by offering them the freedom of choice when it comes to their learning paths and courses whilst continually reevaluating their path within the curriculum.

We can already see evidence of AI programs working to deliver more tailored experiences to users. Duolingo utilizes artificial intelligence and deep learning to ascertain the level of skill a student has when they begin learning a language on the platform. This allows individuals who have had experience in learning a specific language before to learn at a pace that suits them.

The Apple Watch is helping students to develop better habits - particularly when it comes to physical learning, which can help to deliver more hands-on experiences for students. Artificial intelligence is also growing to help create personalized learning plans whilst analyzing students data to deliver a greater quality of insight into their strengths and weaknesses.

On the topic of wearables like the Apple Watch, hardware features many advantages when it comes to learning. Immersive learning largely revolves around making modern hardware work for the wider industry surrounding education. In many ways, they can serve as a learning platform that identifies users based on their smartphones before creating a wider profile that collects data from multiple classes from different subjects.

Immersive learning has the power to tap into virtual reality on a large scale. The growth of the consumer reality technology market means that anybody with a smartphone now has the power to access augmented reality and virtual reality. This has the potential to turn classrooms virtual, and teachers have the ability to mimic real-life school settings for learning - all without expensive or demanding adjustments to be made to accommodate this digitized learning model.

As tech giants like Facebook, Google and Niantic all race to develop the next generation of AR eyewear, well see the adoption of the virtual classroom accelerate at an increasingly fast pace over time. With the emergence of successful reality learning apps like Unimersiv, Timelooper and Google Earth VR already occurring, interest in immersive edtech will grow exponentially over the coming years as hardware continues to become more powerful.

With greater immersive learning experiences, more educators are seeking out ways of gamifying their lessons. This can be effective in getting students to engage more deeply in their learning.

While reality technology and AI can certainly drive the gamification of edtech, and we can already see high profile examples emerging in the form of Kahoot!, Pictionary and even in major title adaptations like Minecraft: Education Edition. (Read also: Amazing AI Advances in Education: Benefits and Controversies.)

In the case of Minecraft: Education Edition, players are rewarded for learning about the periodic table, writing code to fight a wildfire, and visiting Viking villages. This blending of gaming gratification and learning is set to drive the future of education as younger students seek out virtual rewards for their efforts.

In the future, were likely to see blockchain-based cryptocurrencies emerge as another way of rewarding students for completing gamification challenges whilst learning new skills. In being rewarded for their efforts in digital tokens, students could then spend their earned cryptocurrency in specialist digital tuck shops to improve their avatars or to spend elsewhere.

While edtech is set to grow exponentially over the course of the decade, the biggest changes will be seen in how we interpret learning experiences. In a traditionally analogue industry, the emergence of immersive education platforms and rewards through gamification exercises has the potential to make education enjoyable for a wide range of learners - helping to drive greater engagement in an industry with bags of potential.

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The Future of EdTech is Automation - Techopedia

Back in 1991, I ran across the debut album, Ten, from a little band out of Seattle called Pearl Jam. Being a fan of classic rock like Led Zeppelin and Eric Clapton, Pearl Jam's take on grunge appealed to me, and I began to listen to Ten regularly. About a year later, Ten hit the mainstream, and suddenly I had friends telling me to check out this new band called Pearl Jam.

These days, I'm having similar feelings about multi-vendor automation. People in the industry are coming around to something we've recognized and invested in for a few years now: any viable automation strategy needs to span vendors and technology domains. Networks are heterogeneous by nature, and for automation tools to accommodate that, the entire process needs to be automated, not just part of it. You need end-to-end insights instead of patchy islands of visibility.

Our journey started more than six years ago when we acquired Tail-F Systems. Beyond delivering industry-leading, model-based infrastructure automation, what made Tail-F special was their unique multi-vendor Network Element Driver (NED) technology:

At acquisition, Tail-F NCS, now Cisco Network Services Orchestrator (NSO), supported around 25 third-party devices. In the intervening years, we've continued to invest in the multi-vendor capabilities of NSO, and we now support more than 170 third-party NEDs for everything from network devices to controllers to cloud platforms.

When building our IP controller, Crosswork Network Controller (CNC, currently shipping v 3.0), we wanted a tool to make our customers' lives easier, regardless of whose routers they had deployed. To that end, we built CNC around industry standards like BGP-LS, gNMI, and PCEP so that customers could have a consistent set of provisioning, optimization, visualization, and assurance capabilities across all their IP transport infrastructure, regardless of vendor. This was clearly seen at recent EANTC interoperability testing, where CNC was shown managing gear from Arista, Ciena, Juniper, Nokia, and Ribbon:

Looking ahead at the newest Crosswork automation tooling, you can clearly see that multi-vendor support remains a first principle for us. The Crosswork Hierarchical Controller (HCO, formerly Sedona NetFusion) uses an approach similar to NSO to provide a consistent set of tooling and capabilities for automating IP and optical networks in a unified manner, regardless of the underlying infrastructure vendors. Finally, some of the most interesting automation tools we're working on are insights and analytics. Our Crosswork Cloud tools like Network Insights and Traffic Analysis are especially valuable because they're built around standards and protocols so they can give you insights across your entire network, regardless of how it's built.

The bottom line is that automation is almost always a "brownfield" exercise. You have a collection of gear and technologies that you're tasked with making work together. We've done our best to help you by building flexible, adaptable, and extensible tools. If you'd like to know more, take a closer look at Cisco Crosswork. Meanwhile, I'm going to dig out my headphones and get my grunge on.

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Multi-Vendor Automation: The Song Remains the Same - marketscreener.com

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Microsoft partner Red Hat's hybrid cloud automation product is now available on the Azure cloud.

The Ansible Automation Platform is an enterprise framework for building and operating IT automation at scale, letting users create, share and manage automation in many different areas, including development, operations, security, networking and so on.

After Red Hat acquired Ansible, the company described the technology like this in 2017:

The new move to Azure was the latest partnership effort with Microsoft. In fact, a 2019 RCP article described how "Microsoft Touts Internal Use of Red Hat Automation Tool" in its own Fortune 100-class operations.

In announcing the Azure move, Red Hat alluded to that longstanding partnership.

"The collaboration between Red Hat and Microsoft delivers a powerful solution that provides customers flexibility in how they adopt automation to deliver any application, anywhere, without additional overhead or complexity," Red Hat said in a Dec. 8 news release.

The new offering integrates with Azure services such as Azure compute, network and storage, which the company said can boost the ROI of automation and help organizations scale their IT operations.

It's currently in a private preview, for which users can sign up to join.

Just days before the announcement, Red Hat introduced Red Hat Ansible Automation Platform 2.1, noting the addition of a new Automation mesh and other new and improved features and functionality.

The company said Automation mesh provides a simple, flexible and reliable way to scale automation of large inventories across diverse network topologies, platforms and teams, providing:

"Public cloud adoption continues to grow tremendously," Red Hat quoted Jevin Jensen, research vice president, Intelligent CloudOps Market, IDC, as saying. "In addition, the complexity of managing this growth and meeting line of business digital transformation requirements has put added pressure on IT operations teams. New automation solutions are needed to keep pace. Incorporating an enterprise automation platform is an attractive addition for public cloud customers looking to address this challenge and expand their use cases quickly. As the need for enterprise-wide efficiency grows, so does the need for efficiency in their IT systems."

Jensen's research firm, IDC, earlier this year published a report titled "Enhancing IT Operations with Automation Is a Priority in 2021." According to the report, "virtually (97 percent) of organizations see major barriers to their ability to effectively employ automation across their enterprise. Through 2023, many IT automation efforts will be delayed or will fail outright due to underinvestment in creating IT/Sec/DevOps teams with the right tools and skills. The end goal is to deliver consistent, coherent and cooperative automation at scale."

About the Author

David Ramel is an editor and writer for Converge360.

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Red Hat Brings Cloud Automation Platform to Azure - Redmond Channel Partner

CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Dec. 14, 2021 /PRNewswire/ -- Pegasystems Inc.(NASDAQ: PEGA), the software company that crushes business complexity, today announced it has been recognized as a Leader in Digital Process Automation (DPA) Software by Forrester in its The Forrester Wave: Digital Process Automation Software, Q4 2021 (1) report. Pega received the highest score in the current offering category.

Forrester evaluated DPA solutions from the 14 most significant providers. The offerings were ranked according to 23 individual criteria grouped into three high-level categories: current offering, strategy, and market presence. Pega scored the highest of all evaluated vendors in the current offering category and among those with the second highest score in the market presence category.

The report notes, "Pega handles the most sophisticated use cases while moving into wide low-code." It also states, "Functionally Pega is breaking new ground in integrated decisioning as well as process modeling with Process Fabric, which extrapolates process orchestration away from the overall platform. It continues to be a Leader in document automation, AI, and RPA. Reference customers indicated that the Pega platform enabled significant improvement in the ability to meet business requirements faster at lower costs."

In the report, Forrester states, "DPA platforms are increasingly relevant for general-use low-code development and must now be analyzed for those requirements." Vendors included in the report must have the ability to handle complex long-running processes, offer DCM [Dynamic Case Management], be low-code and business-developer-friendly, support adjacent capabilities, and have proven capacity for many apps at scale.

The report evaluated Pega InfinityTM, the software suite that helps businesses tackle digital transformation built on a strong, flexible Center-out business architecturethat weaves together business processes, case management, and workflow across all systems and platforms. By unifying low-code application development, real-time artificial intelligence, and intelligent automation, organizations can create apps more effectively, streamline the customer experience, and improve employee productivity.

This recognition is among Pega's recent analyst firm recognition for low-code platform development and automation. Most recently, Pega received the highest scores in four categories acrossthe2021 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms(2) and2021 Gartner Critical Capabilities for Multiexperience Development Platforms(3) reports.

Pega was also recognized as a Strong Performer in The Forrester Wave: Digital Decisioning Platforms, Q4 2020 (4) report, a Visionary in the 2021 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Robotic Process Automation (5) report, and a Challenger in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for Enterprise Low-Code Application Platforms 2021 (6) report.

Quotes & Commentary"More than ever, enterprises need the tools in place that offer the speed and scalability to adapt quickly to a constantly changing world," said Jeanette Barlow, vice president, product marketing, intelligent automation, Pegasystems. "We believe this recognition of Pega's digital process automation capabilities exemplifies how well Pega's proven platform can handle the challenging, mission-critical use cases as well as broader automation use cases for our clients as they build for today and tomorrow."

Supporting Resources

About Pegasystems Pega delivers innovative software that crushes business complexity so our clients can make better decisions and get work done. We help the world's leading brands solve their biggest business challenges: maximizing customer lifetime value, streamlining customer service, and boosting operational efficiency. Pega technology is powered by real-time AI and intelligent automation, while our scalable architecture and low-code platform help enterprises adapt to rapid change and transform for tomorrow. For more information,pleasevisitwww.pega.com.

Press Contact:Ilena RyanPegasystems Inc.[emailprotected](617) 866-6722Twitter: @pega

All trademarks are the property of their respective owners.

SOURCE Pegasystems Inc.

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Pega Named a Leader in Digital Process Automation Software by Top Independent Analyst Firm - PRNewswire

UiPath increases its full-year guidance.

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Could the Labor Shortage Benefit This Software Robot Automation Company? - Motley Fool

during the forecast period. The rapid adoption of advanced technologies has shown significant growth in the automation testing market across the globe. Software automation testing primarily focuses on reducing time taken for running tests and the better coverage and effective use of test cases.

New York, Dec. 16, 2021 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Reportlinker.com announces the release of the report "Automation Testing Market by Component, Endpoint Interface, Organization Size, Vertical And Region - Global Forecast to 2026" - https://www.reportlinker.com/p05377128/?utm_source=GNW It helps in avoiding human errors.

Manual errors may occur while performing repetitive tasks, whereas automated testing programs help in avoiding these mistakes.Automated testing also provide a provision for accurately storing test results.

The results can be automatically fed into databases and provide useful statistical information about how the software development process is progressing.The biggest benefit of automated testing is that it is easy to run tests quickly, allowing larger test coverage across environments and larger code coverage during the testing phase.

Moreover, a survey conducted under World Quality Report 2021-2022 also denotes that 45% of the organizations budget was used for hardware and infrastructure, and 32% on tools, with the remaining going to human resources. The test automation space has grown from the simple automation of test activities to the automation of test data and test environments. By Component, the services to record a larger market share during the forecast period

In the Automation Testing market by Component, the services segment is expected to record a larger market share during the forecast period.Services are offered under seven types: advisory and consulting, planning and development, support and maintenance, documentation and training, implementation, management, and other services.

The other services consist of ROI analysis, framework, service virtualization, and assessment services.These services enhance enterprises SDLC.

The advisory and consulting services help to enhance automated testing tools and infrastructure across the product delivery life cycle.Automation testing services are largely offered to the developers, end users, and organizations.

Managed services help enterprises to outsource the responsibility for maintaining and anticipating the need of processes and functions to improve operations and reduce expenses.

By Dynamic Testing, the functional testing segment to grow at the higher CAGR during the forecast periodIn the Automation Testing market by Dynamic Testing, the functional testing segment is expected to grow at the higher CAGR during the forecast period.Functional testing is executed to check that all the software features meet the functional specifications, and it is performed by executing the functional test cases.

Functional testing provides input, verifies the output, and compares the actual and expected results.The main aim of functional testing is to make sure that a system works as intended by validating the results.

Functional testing is a type of black-box testing.There are mainly two techniques used to perform functionality testing, namely, based on requirements and based on business scenarios.

In testing based on requirements, all the functional requirements are considered as a base for conducting the tests. Whereas in testing based on business scenario information about how the system will be perceived from a business process perspective is considered to perform the tests. By Verticals, the BFSI segment to hold the larger market size during the forecast period

By Verticals, BFSI is expected to hold the larger market size.BFSI is the banking, financial services, and insurance sector.

It represents a major portion of the world economy comprising all Banking, Insurance, and Non-Banking Financial Institutions.The latter is known as the NBFCs.

The BFSI industry largely refers to financial service firms such as Broking and Asset Management.The digital transformation efforts in the vertical are particularly focused on improvising customer experience, which can be further catered through automation of QA and testing.

Several organizations are experimenting with analytics, AI, and ML to optimize the automation of QA and test activities. The need to automate redundant tasks and give control to the end customers is expected to drive the market over the next few years. The major focus is on quick automation, auto decisioning, data security, instant scalability. The recent trends of Robotic Process Automation (RPA), AI, and ML, and their use in software testing drive the demand for automation testing. By Region, Asia Pacific to grow at the highest CAGR during the forecast period

Asia Pacific is expected to grow at the highest CAGR in the global automation testing market during the forecast period.APAC is the most promising region as it has major economies, such as Australia, Japan, Singapore, China, New Zealand, and Hong Kong, which offer significant growth opportunities for automation testing vendors.

This region comprises major economies like India, and China which has a very large customer base.The governments are taking initiatives for rapid adoption of new technologies like AI and ML, automation, IoT, mobile and web-based applications, cloud-based services, and other technologies.

Due to the adoption of remote work culture by organizations, there is an ever-increasing need for cloud-based solutions and IoT devices to minimize the effect of the ongoing COVID-19 pandemic, which is expected to drive the growth of the automation testing market in the region. The increasing government initiatives, growing requirements for quick computing, virtualized environments, analytics, security, digitalization, and high-volume networking, and rising overall internet speed and responsiveness are the major factors driving the automation testing market growth in this region.

The breakup of the profiles of the primary participants is given below: By Company: Tier 1 35%, Tier 2 45%, and Tier 3 20% By Designation: C-Level Executives 35%, Directors 25%, Others*40% By Region: North America 45%, Europe 20%, APAC 30%, and RoW** 5%This research study outlines the market potential, market dynamics, and major vendors operating in the Automation Testing market. Key and innovative vendors in the Automation Testing market include Accenture (Ireland), AFour Technologies (US), Applitools (US), Astegic (US), Broadcom (US), Capgemini (France), Cigniti Technologies (India), Codoid (India), Cygnet Infotech (India), froglogic (Germany), IBM (US), Infostrecth (US), Invensis (India), Keysight Technologies (US), Micro Focus (UK), Microsoft (US), Mobisoft Infotech (US), Parasoft (US), ProdPerfect (US), QA Mentor (US), QA Source (US), QualityKiosk Technologies (India), Ranorex (Austria), Sauce Labs (US), Smartbear Software (US), Testim.io (US), Thinksys (US), Tricentis (US), Worksoft (US).

Research CoverageThe Automation Testing Market is segmented into component, testing type, dynamic testing, services, endpoint interface, organization size, verticals and region. A detailed analysis of the key industry players has been undertaken to provide insights into their business overviews; services; key strategies; new service and product launches; partnerships, agreements, and collaborations; business expansions; and competitive landscape associated with the Automation Testing Market.

Key benefits of buying the reportThe report is expected to help the market leaders/new entrants in this market by providing them information on the closest approximations of the revenue numbers for the overall automation testing market and its segments.This report is also expected to help stakeholders understand the competitive landscape and gain insights to improve the position of their businesses and to plan suitable go-to-market strategies.

The report also aims at helping stakeholders understand the pulse of the market and provide them with information on key market drivers, restraints, challenges, and opportunities.Read the full report: https://www.reportlinker.com/p05377128/?utm_source=GNW

About ReportlinkerReportLinker is an award-winning market research solution. Reportlinker finds and organizes the latest industry data so you get all the market research you need - instantly, in one place.

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The global automation testing market is expected to grow from USD 20.7 billion in 2021 to USD 49.9 billion by 2026, at a CAGR of 19.2% - Yahoo Finance

DUBLIN--(BUSINESS WIRE)--The "Logistics Automation Market - Growth, Trends, COVID-19 Impact, and Forecasts (2021 - 2026)" report has been added to ResearchAndMarkets.com's offering.

The global logistics automation market was valued at USD 52.19 billion in 2020 and is expected to be USD 104.23 billion in 2026, registering a CAGR of 12.42% during the forecast period (2021-2026).

The emergence of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and the advent of a network of connected systems are helping industries perform a multitude of tasks, such as material batching, picking, ordering, packaging, warehouse security, and inspection. The factor helping improve operational efficiency by huge margins, which, in turn, drives the market.

Industry Highlights

The growth in the e-commerce industry worldwide and the growing need for efficient warehousing and inventory management are driving the market growth. Further, Significant investments are witnessing increased market demand. For instance, In September 2021, Spirit AeroSystems announced a new Global Digital Logistics Center, a seven-story 150,000-square-foot structure as a part of the company's 1 billion investment.

Also, according to the Bank of America, by 2025, 45% of all manufacturing will be performed by robotic technology. Following this trend, large firms, such as Raymond Limited (an Indian textile major) and Foxconn Technology (a China-based supplier for large technology manufacturers, like Samsung) have replaced (or plan to replace) 10,000 and 60,000 workers, respectively, by incorporating automated technology into their factories. These factors have had a direct impact on the increasing adoption of warehouse robotics. The rising number of warehouses and increasing investments in warehouse automation, coupled with the global rise in labor costs and availability of scalable technological solutions, have been driving the market for warehouse robots across the world.

Further, the emergence of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) and the advent of a network of connected systems are helping industries perform a multitude of tasks, such as material batching, picking, ordering, packaging, warehouse security and inspection, and helping improve the operational efficiency by huge margins. The use of IoT technologies allows warehouses for real-time data transfer, flexible communication, and Big Data analytics. These, along with the cloud-based solution, enable automated, sophisticated, and agent-based control.

Additionally, amidst the COVID-19 situation, the warehouse and e-commerce market has been experiencing a crippling effect on the business operations owing to the major challenges posed by disruptions in the supply chain management and lack of workers. However, leveraging the automated systems, companies are expecting to revamp their operations. This instance is expected to drive the growth of the market going forward.

Key Market Trends

Competitive Landscape

The Logistics Automation Market is moderately competitive, with a considerable number of regional and global players. Players in the market adopting strategies such as product innovation, partnerships, mergers and acquisitions to increase their market share. Some of the major players in the market are Dematic Group and Vanderlande.

Key Topics Covered

1 INTRODUCTION

1.1 Study Assumptions and Market Definition

1.2 Scope of the Study

2 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

3 EXECUTIVE SUMMARY

4 MARKET DYNAMICS

4.1 Market Overview

4.2 Industry Attractiveness - Porter's Five Forces Analysis

4.3 Industry Value Chain Analysis

4.4 Warehouse Investment Scenario

4.5 Impact of Macro-economic Factors on the Warehouse Automation Market

4.6 Market Drivers

4.6.1 Exponential Growth of the e-Commerce Industry and Rising Customer Expectation

4.6.2 Increasing Manufacturing Complexity and Technology Availability

4.7 Market Challenges

4.7.1 High Capital Investment and Flexibility

5 MARKET SEGMENTATION

5.1 By Component

5.1.1 Hardware

5.1.1.1 Mobile Robots (AGV, AMR)

5.1.1.2 Automated Storage and Retrieval Systems (AS/RS)

5.1.1.3 Automated Sorting Systems

5.1.1.4 De-palletizing/Palletizing Systems

5.1.1.5 Conveyor Systems

5.1.1.6 Automatic Identification and Data Collection (AIDC)

5.1.1.7 Order Picking

5.1.2 Software (Warehouse Management Systems(WMS), Warehouse Execution Systems (WES))``

5.1.3 Services (Value Added Services, Maintenance)

5.2 Global Transportation Management Market Scenario

5.3 By End-user Industry

5.3.1 Food and Beverage (Including Manufacturing Facilities and Distribution Centers)

5.3.2 Post and Parcel

5.3.3 Groceries

5.3.4 General Merchandise

5.3.5 Apparel

5.3.6 Manufacturing

5.3.7 Other End-user Industries

5.4 By Geography

5.4.1 North America

5.4.2 Europe

5.4.3 Asia-Pacific

5.4.4 Latin America

5.4.5 Middle East & Africa

6 COMPETITIVE LANDSCAPE

6.1 Company Profiles

6.1.1 Dematic Group (Kion Group AG)

6.1.2 Daifuku Co. Limited

6.1.3 Swisslog Holding AG (KUKA AG)

6.1.4 Honeywell Intelligrated (Honeywell International Inc.)

6.1.5 Jungheinrich AG

6.1.6 Murata Machinery Ltd.

6.1.7 Knapp AG

6.1.8 TGW Logistics Group GmbH

6.1.9 Kardex Group

6.1.10 Mecalux SA

6.1.11 BEUMER Group GmbH & Co. KG

6.1.12 SSI Schaefer AG

6.1.13 Vanderlande Industries BV

6.1.14 WITRON Logistik + Informatik GmbH

6.1.15 Oracle Corporation

6.1.16 One Network Enterprises Inc.

6.1.17 SAP SE

6.1.18 MercuryGate International Inc.

6.1.19 Princeton TMX

7 VENDOR MARKET SHARE ANALYSIS - WAREHOUSE AUTOMATION

8 INVESTMENT ANALYSIS

9 MARKET OPPORTUNITIES AND FUTURE TRENDS

For more information about this report visit https://www.researchandmarkets.com/r/afa29n

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Logistics Automation Industry Overview and Outlook 2021-2026 - Dematic Group and Vanderlande and the Key Players - ResearchAndMarkets.com - Business...

Since April, over 1,000 Alabama coal miners have been on strike. The workers say their employer, Warrior Met Coal, has denied them fair wages, good insurance, and reasonable work schedules and conditions, all while paying millions of dollars in fees to Wall Street firms and bonuses to upper management. Since 2016, when Warrior Met Coal took ownership of the mine, workers have seen lower hourly wages, less paid time off, and decreased medical coverage, and both tenured and new employees lost their pensions. Despite various hurdles, the miners union is prepared to continue its strike as an expression of workers constitutional rights.

The Alabama strike is just one of many recent labor disputes across the country, including those at Kellogg, John Deere, Nabisco, and Kaiser Permanenteleading some pundits to dub this past October as Striketober. Meanwhile, worker wages were up 1.5% in the third quarter of 2021 (with an 8.1% increase for restaurant, bar, and hotel workers and a 5.9% increase for retail workers), and record numbers of workers are quitting based on their confidence that they will find better jobsa phenomenon some are calling the Great Resignation.

All these trends signal a surge in worker power across different industries. But ironically, workers newfound leverage may accelerate an impending threat to their jobs: automation. Its vital, then, for workers to use the current moment to press for long-term protections to secure their careers and livelihoods.

There are at least two causes for newfound worker leverage. First, employers are in dire need of workers, and have raised wages as a result. While roughly 10 million people are needed to fill both low-wage and high-skilled positions, only 8.4 million Americans are actively searching for jobs. The political right blames expanded unemployment benefits and stimulus checks for the labor shortage; the left blames low wages, poor working conditions, and widespread worker burnout.

The language of labor shortages is politically charged and often misses the complexity of how job openings, separations, and quit rates differ across various industries. Nevertheless, it is true that the weirdness of the current economy (Moodys chief economist called it an Alice-in-Wonderland job market) tilts in favor of workers, as many employers are forced to improve wages and benefits to avoid being short-staffed.

A second key factor in boosting worker power is the amount of household savings produced through stimulus checks combined with less spending on travel and other large expenses during 2020. This has led to upticks in monthly disposable income and household net worth for households in each quintile, with Pew reporting that personal income in the second quarter of 2021 is up an annualized inflation-adjusted rate of 4.1% from the last full quarter preceding the coronavirus pandemic. Notably, however, this aggregate savings bump is not equal across racial and ethnic groups, with a joint NPR, Harvard, and Robert Woods Johnson Foundation survey finding that at least four in ten Latino, Black, and Native American households report using up all or most of their household savings during the pandemic. Nevertheless, the aggregate personal savings bump has provided many workers who are in between jobs with some breathing room as they hold out for better opportunities.

While increased savings provides a small cushion, it is likely that this worker advantage will not last long, particularly given persistent inflation. Likewise, as supply chain issues are ironed out and consumer demand (particularly for durable goods) stabilizes, employers and employees will establish a new equilibrium, one that will likely again tilt toward employer power at the expense of workers. And though higher wages and more flexible hours are worthy goals, workers should use the potentially narrow window of power they have right now to ensure their job security against a looming threat: the new era of automation.

During their labor dispute this year, Kellogg reportedly threatened its workers that it would send additional jobs to Mexico. The issue of offshoring work was also a driver of the Nabisco dispute.

While President Joe Biden vowed to be the strongest labor president the nation has ever had, some commentators argue that his progressive policies are driving up labor costs and resulting in accelerated outsourcing and automation, while also threatening domestic tech jobs through more generous immigration policies. Of course, arguments about the effects of the administrations agenda are often politically motivated for both supporters and critics, and voices on the left such as the Center for American Progress are quick to counter-argue that the agenda will save jobs by discouraging offshoring. Meanwhile, a recent Wall Street Journal article reports that many CEOs are responding to supply chain weaknesses by pushing to onshore more production, even if it is less efficient. Another recent thread in this debate is the concept of allyshoringdeveloping supply chains with some of Americas known allies, with benefits of not only increasing the reliability of critical supply chains across sectors but also restoring foreign policy ties.

The balance between onshoring and offshoring may ebb and flow with changes to the political economy, but one thing that is certain: Automation will continue to increase across sectors regardless of who is in office. A recent Associated Press article highlighted how the pandemic accelerated automation in the past year, as robots cannot get sick nor will they request time offa trend that replaces service sector jobs once considered safe due to demand for human contact. Striketober is also a likely contributor to this acceleration; as Jeff Burnstein, president of the Association for Advancing Automation, explained, While advances in robot technology, ease of use, and new applications remain key drivers in robot adoption, worker shortages in manufacturing, warehousing, and other industries are a significant factor in the current expansion of robot use that were now seeing.

Similarly, a recent Brookings analysis detailed three reasons why the pandemic is expected to accelerate the pace and scope of automation: (1) the desire of companies to cut costs by transitioning from human workers to machines for automatable tasks; (2) stalled international travel and the United States-China trade war; and (3) increased labor demand and labor costs resulting from the reshoring of jobs. Further, some businesses, particularly fast food restaurants, found that automated operations were attractive to consumers because they reduce the need for human contact with food during the preparation process. In Ohio, Lees Famous Recipe Chicken installed an automated voice system in several locations to take orders, eliminating the need for a person at the drive-through window.

While automation provides cost savings and increased production opportunities for businesses, it has varying impacts on workers, from increased productivity on the positive side to eliminating the need for humans to complete routine tasks on the negative. As expected, the impact of automation on workers is not uniform across racial groups: Black and Latino workers account for 13% and 18% of the U.S. labor force, respectively, but are overrepresented in jobs with a high risk of being eliminated or significantly changed by automation, Brookings found.

For these vulnerable workers to thrive in a future of automation, strategic adjustments in union participation and activism, education, and worker training will be necessary to protect current jobs and create additional pipelines to jobs that are less susceptible to automation. And since firms frequently recapture the costs of training programs, either partially or fully, through productivity gains unlocked by upskilled workers, it is only right that firms increase their investments in training initiatives. This is where workers and unions can use todays leverage and momentum to ensure continued employment into an uncertain, automated future.

Since the earliest days of the knowledge economy, pundits have called for workers to refit themselves for todays jobs. But as our team recently told workforce development leaders in Alabama, we cannot just tell workers to learn to code, thereby shifting all the expense and risk onto employees while all the gains from upskilling flow to employers. Instead, employers themselves need to shoulder the responsibility and at least some of the cost to help equip their workers for tomorrows jobs in an era of automation.

As organized labor celebrates well-deserved victories in Striketober and beyond, labor activists need to ensure that short-term wins dont lead to long-term losses. Given that the current moment of worker leverage will be fleeting, it is imperative that the labor movement makes the most of this opportunity by pushing employers to cover the costs of upskilling, thereby ensuring long-term job security for workers.

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Workers must use their newfound leverage to protect their careers from automation - Brookings Institution

New research links lower stress levels and business automation

There are 12 technology trends to act as force multipliers of digital business and innovation over the next three to five years according to Gartner. The 12 technology trends are:

Gartner definesHyperautomationas a "disciplined, business-driven approach to rapidly identify, vet and automate as many business and IT processes as possible. Hyperautomation enables scalability, remote operation and business model disruption." Gartner notes that Hyperautomation involves the orchestrated use of multiple technologies, tools or platforms, including:

Gartner Top Strategic Technology Trends 2022

The top technology trends that will shape the coming decade, per McKinsey includes the following:

McKinsey: Top 10 tech trends that will shape the upcoming decade

With respect to the first tech trend, process automation and virtualization, McKinsey notes: "Around half of all existing work activities could be automated in the next few decades, as next-level process automation and virtualization become more commonplace.

"By 2025, more than 50 billion devices will be connected to the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT)," McKinsey predicts. Robots, automation, 3D-printing, and more will generate around 79.4 zettabytes of data per year.

Both Gartner and McKinsey point to massive adoption of automation in business as a major strategic trend in the next decade.Automation will accelerate decentralization and digital transformation.

The pace of digital change in business shows no sign of slowing in 2022. The latest research from MuleSoft identifies 7 key digital transformation trendsthat will shape the future of work in 2022 and beyond. The top 7 trends shaping digital transformation in 2022 are:

According to MuleSoft, automation will be a fundamental driving force for the modern digital enterprise rather than being used in piecemeal projects. Hyperautomation is about scaling automation across the enterprise via the reuse of processes and the deployment of multiple, integrated technology capabilities -- such as lowcode platforms, machine learning, and robotic process automation (RPA). It's a market the analyst predicts will grow by nearly 24% from 2020 to be worth nearly $600 billion by 2022 -- as organizations look to identify and automate as many processes as they can rapidly.

PerDeloitte, 93% of business leaders expect to be using RPAs by 2023. 2021 research shows thatautomation will accelerate the decentralizationof businesses with a digital-first investment and new capabilities strategy. Customer service is an example line of business that will see significant hyperautomation. Service organizations are adopting hyperautomation. One area of service automation that's getting a lot of attention is chatbots. Currently,83% of customersexpect to engage with someone immediately when contacting a company -- up from 78% in 2019. This dynamic puts pressure on already-strained teams. Unsurprisingly, we've concurrently seen chatbot adoption grow at arapid pace.

The latest survey from Salesforce revealed that automation solutions increase productivity and better manage employee stress levels. The survey identified four key ways workplace automation has actually improved employee experiences, both personally and professionally. The Salesforce survey, fielded in October 2021 among 773 automation users in the United States, found that 89% are more satisfied with their job and 84% are more satisfied with their company as a result of using automation in the workplace. In addition, 91% of full-time workers say automation save them time and offer better work/life balance.

Here are the 4 key themes of the automation survey:

The positive impact of automation for employees

Adoption of automation throughout business is being driven from both outside and inside of IT. We are seeing incredible adoption of low-code or no-code automationacross all industries.By the end of 2025,Gartner predictsthat half of all new low-code clients will come from non-IT business buyers, as citizen developers on those teams shoulder more of their own projects, decreasing the burden on IT.

Whether through low-code technology or workflow automation, the secret to digital transformation is efficiently delegating work and increasing the automation output of all organizations. Business teams must be empowered to transform their own processes, automating simple, repetitive tasks -- and in so doing, powering successful experiences, both virtually and in-person, across ever-expanding touchpoints. The companies that will succeed and win in a digital-first economy are business that are fully committed in advancing their automation capabilities across all lines-of-business.

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Employee satisfaction increases as a result of automation in the workplace - ZDNet

Qlik on Monday unveiled a new integration with UiPath that will enhance the existing automation capabilities of the analytics vendor's platform.

Qlik, founded in 1993 and based in King of Prussia, Penn., already offers Qlik Application Automation, a tool that enables customers to automate responses and trigger actions within SaaS applications.

The vendor's integration with UiPath, a specialist in robotic process automation founded in 2005 and based in New York whose April initial public stock offering was one of the biggest software vendor IPOs in history, will extend Qlik's automation capabilities beyond those applications.

According to James Fisher, Qlik's chief product officer, rather than automate processes between two connected applications, the integration essentially connects Application Automation to UiPath to automate processes from a broader set of use cases and from applications not directly connected to Qlik -- downstream applications.

"Application Automation created that ability to create system-to-system integration," he said. "RPA is more about mimicking human input into some type of system."

In addition, the integration between Qlik and UiPath furthers the analytics vendor's goal of fueling what it terms active intelligence, Fisher continued.

Qlik defines the concept of active intelligence, which the vendor first introduced at its virtual user conference in June 2020, as the ability to deliver data and analytics to customers in real time at any given moment and in whatever system they may be using so they can make data-driven decisions.

We're able to support our vision around active intelligence fully within the framework that we operate, but what we've done here is extend that paradigm out to a broader set of applications, a broader set of use cases. James FisherChief product officer, Qlik

"We're able to support our vision around active intelligence fully within the framework that we operate, but what we've done here is extend that paradigm out to a broader set of applications, a broader set of use cases," Fisher said. "It's also consistent with our overall approach to having an open platform and being able to foster an ecosystem of partners."

That ecosystem, which now extends Qlik's process automation capabilities beyond its platform to downstream applications, stands to significantly benefit the vendor's customers, according to Mike Leone, an analyst at Enterprise Strategy Group.

Process automation is a focal point for many organizations -- ESG research shows nearly half of all organizations plan to increase spending on automation tools -- and the integration between Qlik and UiPath directly addresses their wants.

"One of the biggest priorities for organizations over the next year continues to be improving operational efficiency, especially as organizations look to embrace data more effectively in their response to the real-time needs of the business," Leone said. "Going into 2022, technology that enables the business to leverage automation across data-centric tools and data workflows continues to drive spend."

Leone added that Qlik customers aren't the only ones who will benefit from the integration with UiPath -- UiPath customers will benefit as well.

Just as Qlik users stand to benefit from workflows being managed by UiPath, many of those workflows don't yet incorporate advanced analytics capabilities.

"This Qlik and UiPath partnership is a great example of the vendors bringing together data stakeholders in a way the improves operational efficiency, agility, productivity and business responsiveness fueled by data and automation," Leone said.

The new integration between Qlik and UiPath, which addresses process automation, comes on the heels of recent moves to add automated machine learning (autoML) capabilities.

On Oct. 1, the analytics vendor acquired Big Squid, a developer of predictive analytics software that uses machine learning capabilities -- including autoML -- to fuel predictive models.

And just a week before unveiling the integration with UiPath, Qlik unveiled a new connector for Amazon SageMaker and an integration with SageMaker Autopilot on Nov. 30 during AWS re:Invent, the tech giant's user conference.

SageMaker is AWS' managed service for building, training and deploying machine learning models, while SageMaker Autopilot is an autoML tool.

UiPath, meanwhile, has developed partnerships with various data and analytics vendors as they also aim to add automation capabilities. Among others, UiPath has partnerships with Alteryx, AWS, Google Cloud and Tableau.

"We're in a world now where we can leverage automation to not be something big and scary that is going to replace human beings, but to create incremental value," Fisher said. "It can take manual drudgery, automate it, and give time back to people to do their job. And it can take linear, trivial actions and automate those to facilitate better downstream action and more rapid responses to events."

That, in turn, enables organizations to get more value out of their data, he continued.

Meanwhile, given the importance Qlik is placing on automation, Fisher said he expects Qlik to develop integrations with other RPA vendors in the near future to further its automation capabilities.

Data pipelines are no longer linear, with data ingested at the beginning, transformed in the middle and analyzed at the end, Fisher noted. Now, there are closed-loop processes within the pipeline, and there are multiple onboarding points for data and offboarding points for insights and actions.

Active intelligence, meanwhile, depends on orchestration and automation throughout the data pipeline, just as effective data-driven decision-making now depends on collaboration throughout the analytics pipeline rather than just at the end stage.

"Automation of workflows isn't the pinnacle of everything we're doing, but it's one very important part where the sum of those parts creates a compelling value proposition," he said.

Enterprise Strategy Group is a division of TechTarget.

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Qlik integration with UiPath boosts automation capabilities - TechTarget