RPA-as-a-Service: How to Migrate 11.x bots to Enterprise A2019

In October 2019, Automation Anywhere launched the Enterprise A2019, the first platform that provides RPA-as-a-Service as a turnkey solution for businesses of all sizes. Enterprise A2019 is a pure web-based cloud-native user experience, which has zero footprints and the lowest cost of ownership. In the present digital era, where daily transactions and operations are digitized, I firmly believe that the A2019 SaaS model lured a lot of existing AAE users and the new users for its ease of use, more operational powerful, and less cost of ownership.

While the Automation world is transforming so swiftly with the advent of new technologies, the businesses need to keep up with the advances. It demands serious attention in terms of adoption based on several factors: enhanced ability to integrate with new tools and systems, Time-efficiency, enterprise-grade privacy, security, governance, compliance, and the famous legacy technology vs New technology debate.

Automation Anywhere Enterprise V11.x and V10.x

Automation Anywhere has stopped the support and the services of Enterprise V10 in Q4 of 2019 that left the businesses with no choice than to migrate to AAE V11. Hence most of the users must have migrated to AAE V11 by now or considering the migration of AAE V11. AAE V11 has become a significant part of everyday life in over 2,800 companies, with thousands of automation in production saving millions of labor hours and dollars. If you are looking to migrate to AAE V11 from AAE V10? Well, take a pause and consider the migrations to the A2019 model as it is the future of Automation Anywhere digital workforce. For an organization that has significantly invested in AAE v11, the automation COE should be prepared with appropriate procedures to accommodate most migrations, but, in the case of version upgrades, more care and detailed planning are needed. A2019’s architecture demands careful consideration of the pros and cons of the new cloud environment.

Migration to Enterprise A2019

Mekkanos recommends the migration of A2019 now as Automation Anywhere has launched the full feature parity in A2019.15 build. If your organization is considering migrating to Enterprise A2019, the first stage is Planning for the migration. In the case of large scale or even medium scale implementations that have been already complete in V11, it is essential to identify and plan the pre-requisites for migration. Here is a list of the most compelling questions that you need to address:

Evaluate the current automation environment and the related functionality
Existing functionality you expect to maintain during the implementation of AA2019
Existing data that must be moved forward into AA2019
Existing data that is not required to move forward into the Infrastructure (that is, old data that may not be valuable)
How you expect the environment to function after the implementation of AA2019
Review the functionality and changes that are available with the version v11 that you use, and use this information to help you design your destination hierarchy
Plan your migration strategy and follow the best practices, caveats, and limitations for the migrations
Revalidate/test existing automation once they are migrated being sure to plan around critical business cycles and the number of bots that can be tested at a time
Review your current workload management and security procedures for impacts and adjustments from A2019, including scheduling and security functions

Migration can be a vital task, especially if you have a large number of automation. During the migration, make sure the current and the new AAE versions exist in parallel. If you are attempting to perform all migration testing in a short period, be aware that additional costs may be incurred when adding bot creator and/or bot runner capacity. Having a solid plan in place to migrate the remaining functionality and take advantage of the new functionality and user interface is the key.

Post the migration, be aware that your center of excellence needs to be dedicated to keeping up with A2019 updates, which are expected to occur every six to eight weeks. The updates occur to each component, e.g., Control Room, Bot Runner, Bot Agent, Bot Creator. Moving to updated releases is a matter of when not if. A2019 will support older versions for only around four to six months. There are numerous reasons to consider migrating from V11 to A2019 – even for organizations that have just completed a migration to V11.

V11 will eventually be out-of-date; AAE discontinued the Community edition of V11 as of June 2020.
Moving your automation to the cloud means reduced infrastructure TCO.
The ease of infrastructure, deployment, and operations set up gives your developers more time to develop.
A2019 comes with an excellent software development kit for those of you who want to create custom packages
Ease of automation development decreases operational overhead.

What is the next step?

Well, is your organization looking for migration or planning to embark on the RPA Journey?? Here is what you need to do.

Reinforce your Center of Excellence for the A2019 migration as well as the constant patch upgrades in the pipeline.
Onboard a vendor who has the essential expertise in the A2019 migration as it is a challenge to perform the migration without knowing the limitations and the practices.
Organizations considering embracing RPA into the business, perform due diligence across automation cloud platforms, make your selection, and get going! There is no time like the present.

Automation Anywhere Enterprise A2019 is truly a disruptive force in the Automation Ecosystem, a flagship product of AAE. And, The COE should be accommodating the new release as part of its upgrade, maintenance, and governance activities like any other systems upgrade. As organizations embrace A2019, there are limited resources to assist you in migration activities. We!!! Mekkanos holds the expertise in building RPA solutions, recommend Transformational strategies, strengthening your Center of Excellence, Migrating to A2019 from AAE V11 or V10, and experience in supporting your automation requirements.

Get in touch with us: info@mekkanos.com | https://www.mekkanos.com/

Author
Aravinth