The corporate leverage is better with Blue Prism. Blue Prism just presents better in a large corporation. It's easier to sell suits and ties than it is sneakers and jeans in financial institutions. That's not really about the application per se; it's the perception.
I've considered other options because of how Blue Prism's product and its acquisition by ACM have shaped its direction. Blue Prism seems to be moving into a more confined space and may not be as open as UiPath.
In UiPath, the ecosystem just feels a lot broader, and there's a lot more innovation and commercial models.
With Blue Prism, everyone wants to charge for everything, whereas in UiPath, you know, the community guard. There's a lot of really good stuff and useful stuff coming out of the community guard that are solving problems because they need to be solved, not necessarily because there's a business model or a commercial model sitting behind it.
Blue Prism is definitely more about the seats and tires, whereas UiPath is for the sneakers and jeans guys.
If Blue Prism could integrate into Azure SQL because it's essentially an on-prem code, on infrastructure as a service. So, Blue Prism has moved the infrastructure into the cloud, but they haven't necessarily moved the application into cloud-native.
So, for now, integration with Azure SQL is one of the critical points for me.
Another area of improvement is pricing. The fundamental problem is that Blue Prism is essentially an on-prem solution that's been moved to the cloud by leveraging infrastructure as a service. Because Blue Prism has to license virtual machines and everything and deploy on virtual machines, which means within their cost structures, you get a little bit of benefits using virtual machines in the cloud, but you don't get the same cost benefit as if you make your software cloud-native. For example, the SQL server and its solutions are essentially using SQL instances, server instances, in the cloud. So, you essentially have to pay for the licensing of an SQL server. This is the licensing that would be associated with it. Therefore, the input costs change.
I have been using Blue Prism Cloud since 2017. We were early adopters of the cloud version. The cloud version is automatically updated, so we use the latest version.
I would rate the stability an eight out of ten. The service is always available, no server issues.
We currently have four customers using this solution. However, a lot of customers are considering to switch to the cloud version.
It is a scalable solution.
There are about seven people on average who work on maintenance.
If you're in a first-world country, The pricing works. But if you're in an emerging economy, then the pricing is still an issue.
I would rate the pricing model a seven out of ten, where one is expensive and ten is affordable.
If it aligns with your requirements, I would recommend using Blue Prism. So, if you need the perception of a more suit-and-tie cooperative kind of thing, then I would recommend using Blue Prism.
Or, if you already have advanced skills and are using ABB Ability Document Capture for your other document intake and intelligent document needs, then Blue Prism Cloud would also be a good option.
However, if you are new to RPA and don't need a high-end product, then I would recommend another product, such as UiPath or Automation Anywhere. These products are less expensive and have a larger user community, which can be helpful for getting help and support.
Overall, I would rate the solution an eight out of ten.