Automation has transformed large-scale data pipelines and now protects sensitive information
What is our primary use case?
I work in the cloud infrastructure department where I automate Python codes and decode ETL pipelines. My usual use cases of Automation Anywhere involve handling large volumes of data that come into the data warehouses, so I manage the data around the ETL pipelines. I ensure with the codes, Kubernetes, and Terraform that everything runs smoothly without any interruptions to the stakeholders. This is my daily work.
What is most valuable?
The features of Automation Anywhere that I appreciate the most involve moving data exactly as needed. For example, I was working in the payment department where we have sensitive data, and when collaborating with colleagues from different departments, I had to ensure what data should be visible to them and what data should not. In that process, we use some tools to define that process and make available only sensitive data.
Other than moving data with Automation Anywhere, I have also appreciated the dashboards and infrastructures. I appreciate the dashboards because my main work focuses on this. I was working in multiple departments, and when I moved to this project, we were in the migration from AWS to GCP. There is a good understanding of those things. We have different engineering departments, and I was working half with security and half with the cloud.
In assessing the flexibility of Automation Anywhere's truly universal orchestration for integrating with different systems and models, I see that it's a kind of e-commerce company right now.
In evaluating the capability of Automation Anywhere's Automation Process Architecture, or APA, for improving orchestration in AI projects particularly, I mention that there are millions of records in the data when we are processing it to the data warehouse. For that, we need Automation Anywhere to replace a few people, making it easy to process the data. For example, if we have to sit and automate each dataset separately by hand, it will take a lot of time to handle the millions of records. With Automation Anywhere, it will automate everything. It's smooth, effective, and very quick. It will make it easy to maintain websites and everything in the backend team, and filter out the errors and everything will be automated.
The introduction of APA has helped my organization in closing the AI ROI gap, as we have certain AI models coming to market, and every company needs to be adaptable to that. Even small companies are including AI because it is making the process smoother, easier, and more efficient. That's the main reason for the importance of this development. Last week I spoke with one of the vendors, and they also echoed this. They demonstrated the sensitive data of the customers and how they are handling it with the help of AI and the dashboard and department infrastructure, which is why it is very important right now.
What needs improvement?
In terms of areas of Automation Anywhere that could be improved or enhanced, as I previously mentioned, it's mostly when processing the data pipelines. There is a main role where we are processing the data, and that is where it plays a key role.
For how long have I used the solution?
Before using Automation Anywhere, I did not use a different technology for the same use cases.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
In assessing the reliability and stability of Automation Anywhere, I find it was nice. Currently, I am working where, for example, a customer has a ticket. I have to go through that and fix it while checking if there is anything on the related dashboard and infrastructure. If there isn't, I need to hand it to the firewall department, as they have to take care of it from there. In the process of taking care, there is a wall between them and me; they cannot fix the problem that I can, and I cannot fix the problem that they can, because there are different departments, different laptop servers, and everything. To build and maintain that, we need a developer.
Over the time that I've worked with Automation Anywhere, I have experienced downtime, crashes, or performance issues. Crashes happened before when I was working, and I have seen many downtimes. We worried a lot, and cost optimization is very important in the projects. We have to contact the supervisor or leads available on shift, take care of it from there, discuss it in team meetings, and proceed. I have to reach out to my lead first, then they will handle everything.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
In terms of how well Automation Anywhere scales with the growing needs of my organization, I can confirm it scales well, particularly to process millions of records.
Since starting with Automation Anywhere, we have expanded the usage, and the process was smooth. Through AWS Glue and Redshift, if we have, for example, a million records, doing it manually would take about a year. With automation, we can complete the process in one or two days or three days, but we need to define the categories of which department should go where. There are different factors we need to build in before processing the data. Then it will go smoothly, taking around fifteen to twenty days.
How are customer service and support?
I often communicate with the technical support and customer service of Automation Anywhere, and it was nice. Whenever I call them, they pick up. There's a little waiting time, but once they get connected, they do a good job troubleshooting the system. I would rate the technical support of Automation Anywhere a ten.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
Before using Automation Anywhere, I did not use a different technology for the same use cases.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
Before choosing Automation Anywhere, I did not evaluate other options or other vendors.
What other advice do I have?
Centralized governance across agents and systems in Automation Anywhere is beneficial for maintaining consistency in my operations, and while I'm not currently working on that in this project, I worked with it in my previous project with Axis Bank. I worked with different departments on that, and I got the chance there.
Regarding whether there is anything else that I would like to improve, I have nothing further to suggest at this time.
I am aware of the pricing and licensing of Automation Anywhere for my company, and sometimes there are spikes and regular traffic. At those times, we have to go through the developers. That is a developer department, so it's not my area, unfortunately.
Automation Anywhere is deployed on cloud in my organization. My overall review rating for Automation Anywhere is nine.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Automation has reduced manual vendor checks and still needs broader use cases and exploration
What is our primary use case?
I have been using Automation Anywhere for the past 1.5 years to reduce manual efforts that we incur every day in our cloud environment.
We are using Automation Anywhere in AWS. We basically receive a few reports from multiple vendors every week and use Automation Anywhere to check if the files have arrived or not. If the file is not available by the expected timeline for each vendor, we need to send an SNS notification to them to trigger that, because if we do not receive that, our subsequent pipelines would fail.
We have some vendors that upload certain reports every week from Monday to Friday. We have close to 29 external vendors uploading all such reports to us, and we need to make sure that the report is available there. Using Automation Anywhere to assume a temporary IAM user, which is session-based access, ensures that the file is available there.
My use case emphasizes that Automation Anywhere has seamless integration with AWS, especially in terms of sessions.
We are still exploring new use cases where we can fit Automation Anywhere into handling certifications, recycling, or if we design a format of incidents with so-and-so user, so-and-so account, so-and-so role, and so-and-so issues. We are working on that to handle all such incidents using specified shell scripts or existing automations executed by Automation Anywhere.
What is most valuable?
Automation Anywhere reduced a lot of manual effort in the use case we already implemented. We used to have only six to seven vendors, and now we have close to 46 vendors, with each vendor bound to share a couple of files every single day, which means we are looking at around 85 to 90 files every day. It is very difficult to keep track of all of them manually.
Automation Anywhere reduced the FTE cost, human intervention, and the time it takes to notify the respective consumer, providing almost immediate notifications, which is not the case with manual processes. The incident resolution time is practically reduced from two hours on average to under 15 minutes.
Automation Anywhere helped me achieve my automation goals as it reduced turnaround time, cost, human intervention, and increased overall satisfaction levels for our customers.
What needs improvement?
We have still not explored Automation Anywhere to its full potential, so I will restrict myself from commenting on improvement areas at this time.
I have still not explored Automation Anywhere fully, but I would like to try it for personal projects. I have registered for the trial period to utilize its capabilities and gain a comprehensive understanding of what Automation Anywhere as a product offers to its customers.
There is no business relationship with this vendor other than being a customer.
I do not have any small or specific improvements in my mind at this point in time.
For how long have I used the solution?
I have been using Automation Anywhere for the past 1.5 years to reduce manual efforts that we incur every day in our cloud environment.
What do I think about the stability of the solution?
Automation Anywhere is stable.
What do I think about the scalability of the solution?
At this point in time, we are pretty much happy with Automation Anywhere's scalability and the benefits it is bringing for us.
How are customer service and support?
So far, we have not raised any support tickets with Automation Anywhere customer support, but I strongly believe they will meet expectations.
Which solution did I use previously and why did I switch?
We primarily used the in-house AWS application, but they did not provide great benefits to us.
We use Lambda functions, but considering the scale of the project, we have many Lambda functions running in our accounts that hit threshold limits, leading us to switch to Automation Anywhere.
How was the initial setup?
The setup is easy. Regarding pricing and licensing, we are not directly paying for it since we use the product provided by the end customer, and I believe the pricing is somewhat justified.
What about the implementation team?
The implementation team was provided to us by my customer itself, and I do not have those internal information available.
What was our ROI?
We have a reduction of two full-time efforts with Automation Anywhere.
What's my experience with pricing, setup cost, and licensing?
The setup is easy. Regarding pricing and licensing, we are not directly paying for it since we use the product provided by the end customer, and I believe the pricing is somewhat justified.
Which other solutions did I evaluate?
I am looking for solutions that can showcase great builds using Automation Anywhere, especially in AWS Cloud or Azure Cloud, making it available to others as open source, so that users of AWS Cloud or Azure Cloud can benefit the most.
What other advice do I have?
The biggest challenges are data governance, security, plagiarism, and using license code. With Automation Anywhere, we have not explored its full potential, so I cannot comment on how it can help in this case.
I suggest others curate their automation needs and consider using Automation Anywhere to implement them smoothly, focusing on specific use cases rather than large, interconnected automation projects.
Automation Anywhere is currently handling around 46 vendors, which is a number that has increased by 16 since we started using it, starting with 30 vendors, and we are satisfied with its ability to handle our increasing vendor count.
AI governance is pretty much required, as the general tendency of humans is to provide all information to tools, necessitating a clear segregation of what can be provided to AI tools and what can be copied from that.
I gave this review an overall rating of 7 out of 10.
Which deployment model are you using for this solution?
Public Cloud
If public cloud, private cloud, or hybrid cloud, which cloud provider do you use?
Amazon Web Services (AWS)
Powerful Low-Code Orchestration Across Agents, Bots, and Apps
What do you like best about the product?
low code capabilities and orchestration across Agents, Bots and business applications
What do you dislike about the product?
User experience building capabilities for creating custom interfaces to show decision support tasks
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
Building workflows for End to end business process transformation
Streamlined Automation with a Few Rough Edges
What do you like best about the product?
I like how Automation Anywhere Agentic Process Automation automates complex workflows without making the process feel complicated. Its user-friendly interface and smooth deployment are great, and it integrates well with different tools. It significantly reduces repetitive manual tasks, improves efficiency, and lets the team focus more on important work rather than routine activities. I also appreciate that the initial setup was fairly smooth, and the documentation and support team made the onboarding process simpler. It works well for managing automation needs across multiple teams and scaling operational workflows efficiently.
What do you dislike about the product?
One area where Automation Anywhere Agentic Process Automation could improve is troubleshooting during complex workflow failures, as debugging sometimes takes extra time. Some advanced features also require a learning curve for new users. In a few cases, integrations with third-party tools needed additional customization, and better reporting dashboards with more detailed insights would make monitoring easier.
What problems is the product solving and how is that benefiting you?
I use Automation Anywhere Agentic Process Automation to automate repetitive SOC and IT tasks, which saves time, reduces errors, and speeds up responses. It improves efficiency, allows the team to focus on critical work, and supports integration with various tools for smoother operations.