Total Addressable RPA market is worth $50 billion, finds new report from management consulting company Zinnov, but enterprises are expected to spend just $2.1 billion in 2019.

The Zinnov report also predicts rapid growth, with RPA spend increasing by 37% a year, hitting $11 billion by 2024 and said that the the worldwide talent pool has increased to 210,000.

The RPA market: The rise of India

No one will be surprised to learn that the US is described by Zinnov as a hot bed for talent in this area, but maybe will be more surprised to learn that the other major area for RPA talent is India.

Then again, maybe not that much of a surprise. With outsourcing under threat at the hands of automation, Indian firms are embracing RPA. As UiPath‘s, Guy Kirkwood told Information Age recently: “9% of our revenue has come from India, yet 60% of the people who have been to our free training courses are based in India.” This means that firms which have traditionally provided outsourcing services are now looking at how they can become experts in automation, in the process shifting their approach to an advisory, or consultancy-led role.

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The industries which are embracing RPA

The Zinnov report said that 70% of RPA adoption is in banking & financial services, insurance, healthcare, and telecom and media.

Since RPA is often best suited for process driven tasks, this finding is hardly surprising.

Zinnov also highlighted the rise of attended robots — which work alongside humans, as opposed to unattended, which typically operate in back offices and handle a process from end to end. Zinnov said that attended RPA account for 30% of the market share, and is growing at a steady pace. It said that the “increasing focus of platform companies to provide unattended and attended RPA, coupled with cognitive capabilities, is giving rise to truly hybrid scenarios.”

This distinction between attended and unattended robots is not without controversy. Blue Prism for example, which focuses on unattended, and indeed the acronym RPA was invented at the company, argues that attended robots are not true RPA at all.

This is a claim that other companies in this arena, such as UiPath and Automation Anywhere where disagree with.

Burnett: Look beyond RPA hype

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Finally, the Zinnov report focused on security issues, it stated: “Enterprises look to address security-related concerns at multiple levels – starting from the infrastructure security which ensures securing the application or SDLC, to looking at information security and ensuring adherence to ISO27001 standards, to also looking at UI level security which includes identity and access management, and finally addressing governance by employing comprehensive audit trails and bot control rooms.”

One RPA player highlighted by the Zinnov report was WorkFusion, which provides an Intelligent Automation Cloud service.

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Commenting on the Zinnov report, Alex Lyashok, CEO, WorkFusion, said: “There’s unprecedented opportunity to transform the workplace with a radically new approach to software. AI and automation are changing the roles of people and entire functions across the organisation, and smart companies are embracing the potential of freeing employees from mundane work to focus more on innovation and value creation.”

Guy Kirkwood, Chief Evangelist at UiPath said: “Most interesting about the Zinnov report is not the positioning of the RPA vendors, as UiPath leading followed closely by Automation Anywhere and Blue Prism is becoming the standard. No, what really piqued my interest was the figure for the total worldwide addressable RPA market being $50 billion. The Zinnov report is the first I believe to accurately size today’s potential market. As companies, industries and governments move to an automation-first mindset, all three major RPA vendors will continue to exhibit hyper growth.”