3213: Redwood Software on How Automation Fabrics Drive Efficiency and Innovation

[00:00:04] Have you ever considered just how much time is lost in businesses due to fragmented automation? Yeah, we've heard all about the positive sides of automation, but what about disconnected workflows, siloed systems and outdated manual processes? All of which collectively create inefficiencies that slow your organisation down.

[00:00:27] But what if there was a way to seamlessly connect all of these automation islands, so to speak, into one unified intelligence system? Well, today I'm joined by Charles Crouchman, Chief Product Officer at Redwood Software, where together we're going to explore the concept of automation fabrics.

[00:00:50] A next generation approach to orchestrating business processes across both legacy and modern systems. So in today's episode, we'll discuss exactly what automation fabric is, why businesses need one, how organisations can identify best processes to automate for maximum impact. And also a step-by-step approach to building an automation roadmap, one that ensures long-term success.

[00:01:20] And with automation playing an increasingly vital role in every business, how can you and your company ensure that you're making all the right moves now to stay ahead and stay relevant in the future? Well, let's find out. Time to get today's guest on. So thank you for joining me on the podcast today. Can you tell everyone listening a little about who you are and what you do? Sure. So Charles Crouchman, I'm the Chief Product Officer at Redwood Software.

[00:01:50] I've been a Chief Product and Technology Officer for five software companies across 25 years in the industry. So I've been doing this a long time. So everything from early stage venture backed companies through mid-stage expansion through Fortune 500 global companies through private equity scale companies, which is what Redwood Software is. My particular expertise is in infrastructure management software.

[00:02:18] I've been doing that for a long time and I've had a number of exits. Cybermation was my first acquired by Computer Associates. So Palace acquired by Microsoft and Turbonomic most recently acquired by IBM, all in the infrastructure management space. Well, thank you for joining me today. And Redwood Software does specialize in full stack automation for mission critical business processes.

[00:02:42] But one of the things I try and do every day on this podcast is demystify a certain area of technology and business. Talk about it in a language everyone can understand. And one of the reasons I invited you on here today was to maybe demystify automation fabrics. So can you tell me exactly what it is and why it's becoming so essential for modern enterprises? Sure, of course. Automation is a very broad term. It can apply to many, many, many things.

[00:03:07] So in our space in particular, automation fabrics refers to what happens is as an IT organization evolves over time, they introduce new technologies and new platforms as they go. And every time they introduce a new platform, whether it's infrastructure or a business application, they build some form of automation around it as a general rule.

[00:03:30] And what happens is over time, you have a really fragmented environment of these little islands of automation. I've got a little bit of automation around my ERP system, my SAP system. I've got some automation in my in my public, around my public cloud infrastructure. I've got some automation around my service management capabilities. And those are all fragmented. And business processes span all of those things.

[00:03:57] So if you really want to automate business processes, you have to automate across all of these systems, everything from legacy systems on the mainframe to modern cloud based systems, business applications, everything in between. So the basic idea of an automation fabric is something that connects all of these islands of automation and orchestrates across them all. So you can automate your business processes across all of these systems and applications.

[00:04:26] And I think many organizations still struggle to identify where to start with automation. As you say, it's a very broad term. So what key factors should businesses consider when determining which processes are most suitable for automation and which aren't? Yeah, well, I mean, broadly speaking, as in all things, the best place to start are with the things that are the highest impact, but the lowest cost or effort.

[00:04:52] So look for things that are important, that can have a big impact to your business, but that don't require three years of project planning to accomplish quick wins, if you will. So in a lot of cases, what this means is a process that's already well understood. You don't have to do a lot of process discovery, but that is not yet fully automated or at least not automated across all functions.

[00:05:20] So that's a good place to start a well understood process where the business benefit of automating that process is evident, whether that's greater efficiency, meaning I can do this thing either faster or cheaper than it was done before, or whether it's really true business benefit. Automating this process will increase our top line revenue or drive down our costs, as an example.

[00:05:47] You want to look for things that are, in this case, again, if you're looking forward to something that is not too high effort, something that's easy to integrate. So in the world of IT automation, that means systems that have pre-built integration. So our product, for example, comes with out of the box with a whole lot of pre-built integration. So you want to start with the systems that are, that the product, the automation product already knows how to talk to.

[00:06:14] You don't have to build anything new to be able to create that automation. You want something that's scalable. You don't, again, if you're looking for a high impact thing, you're not looking for a process that occurs once every six months. You're looking for something that occurs daily or even many, many, many times a day to get that increased return on investment.

[00:06:35] And then finally, from a risk perspective, everything we do now these days has to account for risk, and especially things like cybersecurity, as an example, but also things like human error. So wherever you can find places where human error is a significant impact or something that is degrading the service that you provide to your customers, for example, that's a key candidate for automation, taking the human error out of those processes.

[00:07:04] And I also read that you're very passionate about creating an automation roadmap, how crucial that is for long-term success too. So what would you say are some of the key steps organizations should be taking to build a more sustainable and scalable automation strategy? Yeah, it's a fantastic question. So again, as in all things, you want to start slow and build up. If you really just try to jump right into the deep end of the pool, you'll end up with analysis paralysis.

[00:07:34] You won't know where to start. So the analogy that I quite often use here is think about autonomous vehicles, right? So we didn't jump straight from fully human piloted vehicles straight into fully autonomous vehicles with no steering wheel, no gas pedal, no gauges. We evolve these things over time, right? We start with things like basic cruise control, laser guided cruise control. And there are now five well-understood levels of autonomous vehicles.

[00:08:04] And we don't skip from one to five. We progress from one through five serially. So you really want to do a similar thing with your automation. You want to start with the things that are easier and progress towards the things that are harder. So you want to look at your existing workflows. You want to look at the business processes that you want to automate. Again, look for the ones that are high impact but well understood as an example. You want a phased approach. Again, start small and continue to build on that over time.

[00:08:33] So look for those quick wins. It's important that you select a real platform here. Again, the biggest problem preventing true automation in the IT industry is this idea of islands of automation. You need something that can automate and orchestrate across everything from your legacy systems.

[00:08:55] If you're a mature business, you have very, very old systems that you must continue to operate, maintain, and rely on to your most modern cloud-based, SaaS-based infrastructure and applications. So you need something that can automate across all of those things. You need to make sure that you're leveraging AI and analytics, right?

[00:09:19] But particularly now into 2025, anything that is not considering the impact of AI and analytics as part of the project plan is setting itself up to become obsolete. So in this case specifically, you want to make sure that you're building automated intelligence into all of these automation capabilities, whether that's business insights.

[00:09:45] So making sure that you have systems that are assessing the data that's being collected to look for insights in that data through to AI-based automation, meaning intelligence that can actually alter the tasks being automated, the order in which they're automated, the success or failure rates intelligently in real time based on actual results.

[00:10:13] And automation is often seen as a way to increase efficiency, but it also has a potential to drive innovation. I think that's something we don't talk about enough. So how have you seen companies use automation to transform not just operations, but overall business models? Any stores you can share around that? Yeah. So the efficiency part's well understood, right? From legacy examples like manufacturing, automating, manufacturing, or warehouse operations to things like risk management.

[00:10:41] But really, when you're thinking about business value at the top line of automation, what you really want to focus on are the things that can improve your time to market for new products and services. So as you're planning new products, as you're bringing new products and services to market, look for the processes that you can automate that will accelerate that time to market.

[00:11:07] So in the software business, I'm in the software business, we're, for example, looking at automation and AI to reduce the amount of time it takes to write new code, as an example, or to dramatically reduce the time it takes to find and correct defects or bugs in the code. Those things will improve efficiency, right?

[00:11:30] But really what they'll do is let me release more innovation faster, which will make us more competitive and increase our top line. So you want to look for those kind of opportunities to bring products and services to market faster. And before you came on the podcast today, I was reading that Redwood Software has also been recognized as a leader in the Gartner Magic Quadrant for service orchestration and automation platform.

[00:11:56] So what is it that you think sets your composable automation platform apart and makes it different and stand out from so many of the other solutions out this crowded market? Yeah, very much so. So we're very proud of that result. We're proud of all the folks that did all the innovation to get us to that position. Really, there are a few things that differentiate Redwood from the rest of the marketplace. One is our modern architecture.

[00:12:27] So cloud-based, SaaS-delivered offer, very lightweight architecture, not difficult to implement into your environment, integrates easily into all of your existing systems. We have a low-code, no-code capability, which is now being augmented by AI. What that means is you can create automation even if you're not an automation expert.

[00:12:51] You don't have to have either automation expertise or even really IT or coding skills to create these automations. We've got a visual designer interface and soon a natural language interface for creating automations. So anybody can create these automations. And then finally, on top of that, a deep library of existing integrations.

[00:13:17] So again, if you want an automation platform that can automate business processes across all of your systems, it has to know how to talk to all of those systems. So you have to have pre-built integrations into all of the systems that are relevant to you. And as you're looking forward, you want to make sure that the system that you're investing in has a clear vision how AI is going to continue,

[00:13:43] both how it can interoperate with the AI systems that you're implementing, but also how it's going to embed AI into its own self to lower the cost of creating automation, but also to find new insights in the data being collected. And with hybrid cloud environments becoming the norm and also to try and bring to life everything we're talking about today and help listeners understand the kind of value that we're talking about here.

[00:14:11] Can you share Redwood's automation fabric, how it helps them? Can you share how Redwood's automation fabric helps enterprises orchestrate their workflows seamlessly across both those on-premise platforms and their cloud systems? Yeah, this is incredibly important because, again, the history of automation, you have automation, you recreate automation every time you implement a new platform.

[00:14:37] So you had some automation around your mainframes and then you had some automation around your Unix and Windows systems and then your virtualization systems. Finally, your public cloud systems. You've got some in your legacy on-prem ERP business applications, your next-gen SaaS business applications. What you really need, what's critically important is, and usually an automation platform is only good for a particular automation task or a particular platform, right?

[00:15:06] I'm the automation platform for public cloud or I'm the automation platform for SAP systems or I'm the automation platform for on-premise virtualized systems. In order for something to be an automation fabric, it has to have a foot both in the traditional world, the on-premise business application infrastructure world, as well as the next-generation public cloud SaaS world. You can't separate those things because then you don't have an automation fabric.

[00:15:36] You can't automate your business processes which span those things. So the system must have a foot squarely in the traditional world, as well as the emerging world, in order to be a viable automation fabric. And I was also reading earlier today that Redwood Software appears to be entering somewhat of a new phase with your acquisition of Vista Equity Partners and Wahlberg Pincus LLC as well. So can you tell me about that?

[00:16:03] How will that impact your overall mission at Redwood for the future of automation? Yeah, this is very exciting for us. So Vista Equity Partners and Wahlberg Pincus are two of the largest private equity companies in the world. And they saw a lot of value and built a lot of excitement around understanding Redwood's business, both where it's been as well as where it's going.

[00:16:29] So they placed a bet on us and they've acquired the company. And their thesis now is that there is a lot of runway in front of us for us to scale Redwood Software into a leading enterprise software company.

[00:16:45] And so with the backing of two of the largest private equity companies in the world, the leading technology that Redwood's developed over the last number of years, and all of the incredible teammates that we have in this company, we're very excited about our ability to scale this business, provide more value to our customers, and build a really important and really exciting business. Fantastic news. And if we were to look ahead, what do you see as the biggest trends in automation?

[00:17:15] What are you keeping your eye on? And how should organizations be preparing to stay ahead in this increasingly automated world? Because the speed of change just seems to be ramping up and up. So what excites you here? For sure. Sure. So I'll start with it. And I know I'm repeating this a lot, but it's important. This idea of automation fabric. The idea that your automation platform needs to orchestrate across all of your systems. Do not have islands of automation.

[00:17:41] You will not get the efficiency gains you're looking for or the productivity improvements. You will not improve your time to market at all in the way that you could if you had a true automation platform. So that's the first thing. Looking forward, like every industry, we've got an eye on AI. I mean, everybody's trying to figure out what impact AI is going to have on their business, either potentially as an opportunity to accelerate their business or as a threat that might disrupt their business.

[00:18:11] So in the case of automation, specifically around automation fabrics, it's both an opportunity and a threat. The opportunity is there will be many, many more IT systems implemented that need automation. Right. And if you're going and again, this idea of having your foot in last generation on-prem, current generation cloud and next generation AI systems, being able to automate and orchestrate across all of those is a great opportunity.

[00:18:41] The other opportunity is having AI built into the technology itself. So this idea that you can embed generative AI into your system to do things like lower the amount of skill needed to implement automations, but also to provide new insights based on the data being collected. So those are really the opportunities. You can make your software more powerful by embedding AI. You can make it more relevant by integrating it with external AI systems.

[00:19:11] The threat is, and everybody in the software market is looking at this saying, can AI systems someday make me obsolete? Can it replace what I'm doing? Right. And the answer to that, at least in the case of our industry, of the automation industry, I think some automated tasks will be taken over by what's being referred to as agentic AI. Right.

[00:19:38] The idea of moving AI systems beyond really just being skilled at natural language and maybe images and sound into actually being able to take action in the environments through agents, therefore agentic AI. So you're seeing a lot of platform providers build agentic AI into their systems so that there's automation built into this system.

[00:20:02] And that's something that, so those are automated tasks then that you wouldn't ask somebody another system to do. But what those things are not doing is orchestrating across systems. Right. And so that's really where, again, the idea of automation fabrics come in. How do I not just automate inside of a particular application, but how do I orchestrate across my applications, across my infrastructure? So it's both a threat and an opportunity for all industries.

[00:20:32] And that's how it really relates to the automation industry. Well, we started the podcast today talking about your origin story. We came full circle talking about the success with Gartner and the recent acquisition by Vista Equity Partners and Wahlberg Benkis. But if you look back and reflect on just how far you've come here, what's the funniest, almost interesting story that has happened? I'm sure that you picked up a few over the years. Some you could share, some you can't. But is there any you can share? Yeah, fair enough.

[00:21:02] Well, what happens is when you've been doing this for a long time, you spend a lot of time on the road. You travel a lot. And early in my career, one of the companies that I worked for, the CEO was also a pilot. And so he had a private plane, which was wonderful. It wasn't luxurious. It was a little turboprop Cessna. So it was small and cramped and bounced around a lot in the weather.

[00:21:30] But it was very, very, very, very convenient. Rather than taking commercial flights and going through security and customs and all that kind of stuff. As a Canadian, I go through customs every time I travel because I'm always going to another country. The downside is, so there was one time we were flying and we all got in the plane and we locked the door and we took off. And I just heard, I kept hearing a rattling noise and I wondered what it was.

[00:21:59] And I wondered what was rattling. And we finally arrived at the destination and we landed. Only to find out what had happened was the pilot had left the keys in the door. So what we heard were the keys rattling against the outside of the airplane. Luckily, they never turned. The door didn't open and we didn't get sucked out. But these are the sorts. Anybody who travels a lot has stories like this.

[00:22:22] So we keep hearing these days about a lot of airline related incidents, right? Doors falling off, things like that. But just make sure your pilot never leaves his keys in the doors. What a great story. I absolutely love that. And for anyone listening who wants to dig a little bit deeper on anything we talked about today, where would you like to point everyone listening? Yeah, www.redwood.com.

[00:22:52] It's an excellent educational site, not just on Redwood software, but on automation in general. Well, I'll have links to everything so people can find you nice and easily. And one of the so many big takeaways for me, and I think more than anything on behalf of the listeners, is just demystifying and describing exactly what an automation fabric is, why organizations need automation fabrics, and how organizations can identify the processes most suitable for automation.

[00:23:20] I'd love to hear from anybody listening how helpful it was to them and what they're going to be doing with this information. But just thank you for talking about it today and putting it in a language everyone can understand. Thank you, Charles. Thank you, Neil. It was a pleasure. One of the big takeaways from my conversation today is automation is no longer just about cutting costs or improving efficiency.

[00:23:42] It's actually about orchestrating complex business processes in a way that allows organizations to innovate and scale. And some of the key takeaways from our chat today is automation fabrics, they can unify fragmented processes and creating this seamless operational flow between legacy and modern systems. But the best automation strategies don't go shooting for the moon.

[00:24:09] The best ones start small, focusing on those well-defined high-impact processes. And only after them do they begin scaling up. Because yes, AI is accelerating automation, but true transformation requires cross-system orchestration. And that's something that AI alone cannot achieve.

[00:24:30] And as automation continues to evolve, what steps is your organization taking to build a more sustainable strategy? Let's continue the conversation. You know the drill. Email me, techblogwriteroutlook.com, LinkedIn, X, Instagram, just at Neil C. Hughes. Other than that, it's time to prepare for a completely different topic tomorrow. So I'm going to get my studying hat on to do my research for the questions.

[00:25:00] And I'll return back tomorrow. Speak with you then. Bye for now.