HFS Highlight: Workato doubles down on Europe after surge in customers and use

Workato’s integration-led automation capabilities have made it a hit in Europe with a 289% increase in data use on its platform in the EMEA region in the last 12 months.

By way of response, the business is doubling its investment in Europe and spending a chunk of the $110m of Series D funding it bagged early this year to open its first EMEA data center, in Frankfurt, Germany.

Workato now has customers throughout EMEA with operations in Spain, UK, Germany, France, Ireland, Netherlands, and Italy. Clients include TFG Transfracht (Deutsche Bahn Group), Box, World Economic Forum (WEF), Showpad, Jumia, and WorldRemit. They are often attracted to Workato when looking for a business-friendly integration platform alternative to MuleSoft or Boomi (or a cloud-to-cloud, less brittle automation alternative to robotic process automation (RPA).

Well-placed to capitalise as Dell sells Boomi to private equity

Last week, Dell confirmed it will sell Boomi – to TPG Capital and Franciso Partners – for $4b; $1b more than expected. In a market enjoying both rapid growth and attracting investment, the new owners will focus on developing Boomi’s tools to connect cloud data and workflows with automation.

In the meantime, as the dust settles on acquisition, Workato is well-placed to take advantage of any uncertainty left in the wake of the Boomi sale.

Workato’s new German Data Center won’t be its last, even this year

The new data center is part of plans to double investment in the region and will mean Workato’s European customers have a centralized location for data-hosting offering assurance for those customers whose specific data needs demand data residency solutions. Given the growing demand, adding a data center in Europe makes sense from a capacity point of view, too.

Workato says the move is in response to a wider customer demand for regionally-based servers, and that the European center won’t be the last. Rising demand in Asia-Pacific means a Workato data center will be in place in Asia by the end of the year.

European workforce is planned to expand 150% in 2021

Workato’s investment in Europe isn’t limited to infrastructure. It will be hiring across functions, scaling the European team from 40 people currently to 100 people by the end of the year. The main office will remain in Barcelona, with teams working – for the most part remotely – across Europe.

Business users like Workato’s low-code/no-code ease of use, while the deep tech background and expertise of its founders, Vijay Tella (CEO), Gautham Viswanathan (VP of Product), Harish Shetty (VP of Engineering), and Dimitris Kogias (Chief Architect) ensure IT confidence that Workato can deliver at enterprise standard.

Markus Zirn, SVP of Strategy & Business Development at Workato, identified the pandemic’s forced focus on digital strategies and remote working as a key factor in the boost in business Workato has enjoyed in the last 12 months. EMEA enterprises were fast to recognize the need for automation platforms – such as Workato to achieve automation at scale.

Workato’s response aligns with European focus on process automation

Workato reports a doubling in the growth of customers in EMEA, fuelling the increase in data usage.

They have benefited from a European focus on process automation – a top-three priority in Europe, and only making the top 3 priorities for business leaders based in Europe (Exhibit 1).

Exhibit 1: Which technologies have ‘significant focus’ from business leaders to meet objectives in the current pandemic economy

Source: HFS Research, March 2021 (Supported by Blue Prism). Surveying 400 of the Global 2000 enterprises

Workato has become the “glue” that helps customers work across applications and automate tasks and processes. Its ‘recipes’ approach enables teams to assemble objects and connectors to deliver event-based outcomes, started by event-based triggers – such as a new lead added to Marketo or a new ticket created in Zendesk. Workato’s sweet spot is cloud-to-cloud or cloud-to-prem automations, connecting the various SaaS-based applications enterprises have invested in over the last decade.

HFS designated Workato as a Hot Vendor in 2020 for the way they help enterprises inch closer to the HFS ideal of the OneOffice organization – leveraging digital technologies to help break down silos and improve employee and customer experience through making automation a native part of evolving enterprise DNA.

While they offer an array of integration, automation, and orchestration capabilities, they are more regularly recognized as an integration platform as a service (IPaaS) player, a current reality reflected in our OneOffice Emerging Tech Platform (exhibit 2).

Exhibit 2: Workato iPaaS capabilities recognized on the OneOffice Emerging Tech Platform

Source: HFS Research, 2021. Examples are representative

The bottom line: Data Centers offer capacity – building SI partnerships will fill it

Workato, founded in Silicon Valley in 2013, is headed in an ambitious direction – built on success through deep relationships with independent software vendors. To ramp up growth it must now deepen and expand its partnerships with the service integrator community (where it already has strong ties with HCL, Cognizant, Deloitte and Persistent). It may find itself uniquely well-positioned to capitalise on any short-term uncertainty left by Boomi being under new ownership.