Constellation Insights

Rise of the robots: An influential robotics trade association has released its latest industry growth numbers for North America, and the results are impressive. Here are the key details from the Association for Advancing Automation:

For the first nine months of 2017, 27,294 orders of robots valued at approximately $1.473 billion were sold in North America, which is the highest level ever recorded in any other year during the same time period. These figures represent growth of 14% in units and 10% in dollars over the first nine months of 2016. Automotive-related orders are up 11% in units and 10% in dollars, while non-automotive orders are up 20% and 11%, respectively.

For shipments, 25,936 robots valued at $1.496 billion were shipped in North America during the first nine months. These record high quantities represent growth of 18% in units and 13% in dollars over what sold in 2016. Automotive-related shipments also grew 12% in units and 9% in dollars during that time, with non-automotive shipments increasing by 32% and 22% for units and dollars, respectively.

POV: A3 also reports that the North American machine vision market grew 14 percent to $1.94 billion. Overall, the numbers paint an incomplete picture of the global robotics market due to their geographic limitation, but do provide leading indicators of where and in which ways industries are investing in robotics. It's notable to see CPG companies come in third-highest with investments after metals and automotive parts, as is the 20 percent uptick in non-automotive orders. Constellation tracks robotics from both a hardware and software perspective. Go here to read our ShortList of robotic process automation vendors, which concerns the latter.

Twitter releases new enterprise API: Companies looking to engage with customers through Twitter chatbots have a new tool in the form of an enterprise API the social media platform released this week. The new API builds on Twitter's existing Account Activity API, which delivers in real time activities such as tweets, mentions, blocks, likes, mentions, direct messages sent or received, and follows. The standard version supports up to 35 accounts, whereas the enterprise edition allows for large numbers of accounts—Twitter didn't specify how many in its announcement—and managed support.

Twitter is also removing the beta label from a series of direct messages features, such as quick replies, welcome messages and customer feedback cards. Other key additions to direct messages include read receipts and indicators when a chatbot is typing out a response. Finally, Twitter released details of when some older DM features will be deprecated next year.

POV: The announcement shows Twitter can deliver on its developer roadmap and is continuing to figure out what kind of features enterprise developers need. Earlier this year, Twitter released a set of Premium APIs, which addressed a particular pain point: Many developers had been running up against the limits of its free APIs but weren't willing or able to pay for the enterprise versions. Premium APIs offer more features but are priced lower than the enterprise API.

 


Micro Focus adds open-source COBOL tools: There remains a vast amount of legacy COBOL code out there, running in production systems. Micro Focus has built a substantial business around COBOL support and application rehosting, and just became a bit bigger of a player with the acquisition of COBOL-IT, a Paris-based company that develops open-source COBOL technology. Here's how Micro Focus describes the value proposition:

It is the first COBOL vendor to develop and deliver an open source-based COBOL compiler and run time environment, enabling enterprises to run compiled objects in all Open Systems Unix, Linux, and Windows platforms.

"COBOL-IT adds a unique and exciting dimension to our COBOL product portfolio, and enables us to offer technology support that fully spans the evolving needs of customers as they extend, integrate and modernize their core business applications and data," said Chris Livesey, SVP and GM, Application Modernization and Connectivity at Micro Focus.

POV: It's the first acquisition for Micro Focus since it completed the purchase of software assets from Hewlett-Packard Enterprise in September. While the deal appears to be on the small side, it's fairly strategic for Micro Focus. COBOL-IT had previously positioned itself as the "best alternative" to Micro Focus and mainframe COBOL, claiming savings of up to 80 percent. It's not quite clear how COBOL-IT's tools will fit into Micro Focus's broader application modernization strategy, but the deal does give it a lower-cost option for its price list.