Blue Prism snaps up Thoughtonomy

Blue Prism's move to acquire fellow process automation player Thoughtonomy will not only give the firm access to more skilled people, cloud expertise and customers but a business that has been aggressively expanding its channel base.

Last summer, Thoughtonomy revealed that it was aiming to put 90% of its business through the channel by the end of the first quarter 2019 and it had already grown the indirect business significantly.  Now the firm will get to share that knowledge with Blue Prism after it became the target of an £80m acquisition.

 Thoughtonomy is a SaaS specialist that will be able to combine Blue Prism's robotic process automation tools with other AI tools via the cloud.

“I am very pleased to announce this strategic acquisition; which provides Blue Prism with a turnkey SaaS product which combines the power of the connected-RPA with a fully integrated suite of premium quality AI and RPA capabilities, on demand. The product is available to customers without the overhead of setting up a dedicated infrastructure and as a result is ideal in serving the mid-tier of the market," said Alastair Bathgate, CEO of Blue Prism.

"We believe that the cloud will grow in importance across our enterprise customer base, and this acquisition will also help further our development of enterprise-based cloud products," he added.

The announcement of the tie-up came with a continued commitment from both companies to, "continue to build out the strongest partner network in the industry aimed at driving up customer adoption in key market verticals".

Terry Walby, CEO and Founder of Thoughtonomy, said that it had been working with Blue Prism ever since it started operating back in 2013.

“We’ve built out our unique SaaS and intelligent automation capabilities to leverage their best in class RPA software,” he added “Together as leaders we plan to broaden and simplify access to the most advanced digital workforce capabilities on the planet.”