Fragmented RPA Market Helps Independents

A fragmented RPA market helps the independent vendors because enterprise automation usually spans too many systems for one software suite to own the whole workflow. A bank or insurer might run SAP for finance, Salesforce for CRM, Microsoft for desktop work, and older internal tools for everything else. In that setup, customers often prefer an RPA layer like Automation Anywhere that can sit across all of them, instead of tying automation to whichever incumbent suite they bought first.

• Automation Anywhere is built to work across major enterprise systems including Salesforce, MuleSoft, Google Workspace, Workato, and ServiceNow. That matters because RPA is most valuable when a bot can move data between many apps, not just automate tasks inside one vendor's stack.
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• The incumbents still moved fast to add their own RPA. Salesforce moved Servicetrace into MuleSoft in August 2021. Microsoft bought Softomotive in May 2020 for Power Automate. SAP added Contextor in 2018. Those deals were defensive as much as offensive, they kept automation spend inside broader software bundles.
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• This market can expand for multiple winners because automation starts small and spreads. Automation Anywhere sells yearly contracts based on how many bots run and how many employees use them, then expands as more teams automate more processes. UiPath shows the same land and expand pattern, with 76% of fiscal 2025 revenue growth coming from existing customers.
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The next phase pushes RPA toward a control layer for mixed environments, not a standalone bot tool. As incumbents bundle automation into their clouds, independent platforms win by being the neutral option that can orchestrate across suites, legacy software, and newer AI driven workflows. That keeps vendor choice attractive rather than temporary.