Is process mining new? Celonis, like every good marketer on the make, suggests it is: Process mining, it explains, uses Celonis’ software to identify how work moves through an organization and suggests more efficient ways of getting the same work done, also known as process mining.
Process mining image credits: mbortolino / Getty Images
On April 1 Celonis continued, “Before you can improve a workflow, you have to understand how work advances through a business, which is more complex than one might imagine inside a large enterprise.” That’s where Celonis comes in. It uses software to identify how work moves through an organization and suggests more efficient ways of getting the same work done, an approach it call process mining.
That day the company announced a significant partnership with IBM, by which IBM Global Services will train 10,000 consultants worldwide on Celonis. The deal gives Celonis, a company with around 1,200 employees, access to the massive selling and consulting power of IBM, while IBM gets a deep understanding of a piece of technology that is at the front end of what it describes as the workflow automation trend.
The chief revenue officer at Celonis, explains that “digitizing processes have been a trend for several years. It has sped up due to COVID, and it’s partly why the two companies have decided to work together.” Intelligent workflows, he continues, or more broadly spoken workflows built to help companies execute better, are at the heart of this partnership and it’s at the heart of this trend now in the market,”
IBM’s view looks a little different: One view of this is that IBM now owns Red Hat, which it acquired in 2018 for $34 billion. The two companies believe that by combining the Celonis technology, which is cloud based, with Red Hat, which can span the hybrid world of on premises and cloud, the two together can provide a much more powerful solution to follow work wherever it happens.
“I do think that moving the [Celonis] software into the Red Hat OpenShift environment is powerful because it does allow what’s already a very open solution to now operate across this hybrid cloud world, leveraging the power of OpenShift, which can straddle the worlds of mainframe, private cloud and public cloud, writes Ron Miller, technology journalist at Tech Crunch. “The data straddle those worlds and will continue to straddle those worlds,” adds Mark Foster, senior vice president at IBM Services.
Most importantly, it offers another way to leverage IBM’s stunning investment in Red Hat by creating another opportunity to use OpenShift, which is shaping up as the crown jewel of the Red Hat acquisition.
A lingering question arises: Why didn’t IBM, a multi-billion dollar company, just buy Celonis outright. It probably could have acquired it for what would amount for IBM as petty cash.
Or maybe Celonis was not willing to jump for what it considered small money. Miguel Milano, chief revenue officer at Celonis, says that digitizing processes has been a trend for several years. It has sped up due to COVID, and it’s partly why the two companies have decided to work together. “Intelligent workflows, or more broadly spoken workflows built to help companies execute better, are at the heart of this partnership and it’s at the heart of this trend now in the market,” he insists..
The other part of this is that IBM believes that by combining the Celonis technology, which is cloud based, with Red Hat, which can span the multiple hybrid worlds including on premises and multiple clouds, the two together can provide a much more powerful solution to follow work wherever and however it happens.
Anyway, the companies report they had already been working together for some time prior to this formal announcement, and this partnership is the culmination of that. As this firmer commitment to one another goes into effect, the two companies will be working more closely to train thousands of IBM consultants on the technology, while moving the Celonis solution into Red Hat OpenShift in the coming months.
It’s clearly a big deal with the feel of an acquisition, but Milano says that this is about executing his company’s strategy to work with more systems integrators (SIs), and while IBM is a significant partner, it’s not the only one. Oh yeah? With IBM Global Services set to train 10,000 consultants worldwide on Celonis what SI is going to be bigger.
DancingDinosaur is Alan Radding, a veteran information technology analyst, writer, and ghost-writer. Follow DancingDinosaur on Twitter, @mainframeblog. See more of his work at technologywriter.com.