The RPA market is a $20 billion mistake at enterprise scale. Not because robotic process automation doesn't work — it does, for narrow, stable, well-defined tasks. But because the RPA vendors sold it as a general-purpose automation platform. It isn't.
Why RPA Fails at Scale
RPA bots automate UI interactions. They're brittle: when the screen changes, the bot breaks. Maintenance costs for mature RPA programs routinely exceed the initial implementation cost by 3–5x. The "automation" requires more human oversight than the manual process it replaced.
The deeper problem is architectural. RPA is bot-first: you identify a task, you automate it, you move on. There's no architectural framework governing how bots relate to each other, how decisions are made, how knowledge is shared, or how the system evolves.
The result: RPA sprawl. Hundreds of bots, nobody knows what they do, maintenance is a full-time job, and the automation coverage is still below 40%.
What Agentic OS Replaces
The A² Agentic OS doesn't just replace UiPath and Automation Anywhere's tooling. It replaces their entire model.
| RPA Model | Agentic OS | |---|---| | Bot-first | Architecture-first | | UI-based automation | API + knowledge substrate | | Brittle, break on change | Self-healing via A2A protocols | | No governance framework | Control Gate™ at every boundary | | Sprawl without visibility | Observable fitness functions | | Bot-level documentation | Full BPMN/DMN audit trail |
The Migration Path
Migrating from UiPath or Automation Anywhere to A² Agentic OS follows the Legacy Scaffold & Extension pattern:
- Inventory: Map all existing bots, their triggers, inputs, outputs, and owners
- Classify: Identify which bots automate genuine cognitive tasks vs. deterministic rules vs. process orchestration — most are the latter two
- Rebuild: Replace bot logic with BPMN flows + DMN tables + focused agent capabilities
- Decommission: Retire bots as their agentic replacements prove out in parallel
The typical UiPath migration completes the highest-value automation targets in 8–16 weeks. By the end, the organization has an architectural foundation that can scale — not a collection of fragile scripts.
Ready to apply this in your organization?
Book a free discovery session. We'll show you exactly how A² Agentic Architecture applies to your stack, your domain, and your automation targets.
Book a Discovery Session →