The 2019 UiPath Developer Conference
That’s a wrap! On January 18, 2019, we held our
second annual UiPath Developer Conference in Bengaluru, India. With 21
speakers, 29 different sessions, over 700 attendees, and 160 live streaming
events, this conference is the biggest Robotic Process Automation (RPA) event
for the developer community in India.
More than 80% of the UiPath Developer Conference
attendees were RPA developers who are currently using the UiPath Enterprise RPA
Platform. They liked getting a sneak peek at upcoming innovations as well as
actionable best practices they could use to improve their automation
development efforts.
As one developer put it, “The UiPath RPA Developer
Conference was a great experience. I got a firsthand look at many upcoming
features and learned many tips I can start using as soon as I get back. I love
the UiPath tool.”
One attendee
even went so far as to call the conference a “life-changing moment.”
India
as a global RPA leader
India is
quickly establishing itself as the global hub of RPA and the conference looks
to recognize that and continue to help advance the country’s RPA ecosystem.
According to Bobby Patrick, CMO at UiPath, 75,000 people have UiPath
certifications in India. That’s 3 times more than any other country in the
world!
UiPath expects to train 500,000 students across more
than 1,000 colleges and universities by 2022.
Early presentations helped set the stage by putting
RPA in context and showing just how 'big' this technology really is. Raghu
Subramanian, President and CEO of UiPath India, set the stage with his
welcoming remarks:
RPA is clearly at the forefront of technology in
India and is in the top 10 technologies currently shaping the Indian IT
industry.
Other presentations supported UiPath’s Automation
First vision, which is itself a three-pronged approach where we strive for a
Robot for every person, continued open and free collaboration to make UiPath
technology even better, and a commitment to Robots that learn skills.
Patrick
discussed how RPA is leading the GigaBot Economy, which is human workers and
the digital workforce (software robots) working together, alongside each other,
and across borders for even greater business transformation.
He also predicted more enterprise companies will
create Robotics Operation Centers (ROCs), similar to the security operations
and network operations centers already commonly present in enterprise
organizations.
Additional
conference sessions offered a closer look at the UiPath product roadmap, and
specifically, how customer- and developer-driven enhancements continue to
become part of the UiPath Enterprise RPA platform.
This year’s
conference also tried something new: the first-ever UiPath Academy Live Advanced
session. Attendees flocked to this event—much more than the beginners’
session—clear evidence that developers are passionate about expanding their RPA
knowledge and learning valuable new skills.
Daniel
Dines’ big announcement
For many, the
most notable highlight came as part of UiPath CEO Daniel Dines’ keynote speech.
In it, he described RPA developers’ single-most challenging task—attempting to
automate tasks in a Citrix environment or a virtual desktop infrastructure
(VDI) where they don’t have access to the underlying applications.
Past automation attempts used OCR and image
matching, but these approaches led to larger scalability and maintenance
issues. UiPath recognized the challenge and then spent 18 months developing a
computer vision capability that extracts critical inputs and successfully
automates workflows in Citrix or other VDI environments.
