The Fortune 50’s secret weapon: Who is Redwood Software?
Written by: Chelsea Williams
8 Min Read
Every household name was once a bold idea. Small teams with big ambitions, tinkering in garages and cramped offices, chased visions that would change the world.
Redwood Software is no different. Founded in 1993 in the Netherlands by Tijl Vuyk and a few of his fellow Oracle employees, Redwood was once just a few innovators who saw automation as much more than a tool for IT efficiency. Their deep background in enterprise software planted a seed in their entrepreneurial minds: the notion that businesses needed more than isolated automation solutions. So, they set out to build an accessible platform to connect IT processes to critical business functions.
“Redwood had the benefit of being led by a tech visionary founder for much longer than all of its competitors,” says Devin Gharibian-Saki, former Senior VP, Business Development and Strategy. “This enabled us to develop a culture of product innovation and thought leadership and allowed us to be ahead of market trends and find smarter and better solutions for our customers.”
IT has evolved tremendously, as Redwood has remained steadfast in its mission to empower customers with lights-out automation for their mission-critical business processes. While many companies pivoted, merged or got swallowed by industry shifts, Redwood stayed focused on building automation solutions that free businesses from repetitive tasks and unleash human potential where it matters most.
From startup to industry shaper
In 1994, Redwood launched its first IT automation product, Express for Unix. By the late 1990s, it had expanded to the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom, proving that automation wasn’t a luxury but a necessity for the modern enterprise.
The early 2000s brought Redwood’s vital partnership with SAP, a relationship that would redefine business process automation. While others in the industry focused solely on IT job scheduling, Redwood took a broader approach and sought to make business processes just as efficient as their underlying IT workflows.
But early success didn’t come without hiccups, as some of Redwood’s longest-tenured employees explain.
One of the biggest challenges Redwood faced early on was the dot-com crisis. At that time, Redwood was considering going IPO. This ambition had to be put back in the fridge until decades later. We had to figure out how to evolve from a services organization into a software vendor. Figuring out how to become a global entity was another factor — it took at least two attempts to start an organization in the U.S.
Gerben Blom, Field CTO, Redwood Software
When I started working at Redwood in 2011, it was a very different company. It felt like a startup, where you sometimes get the impression that you need to do the work of five different typical roles you’d find elsewhere in larger organizations. At the time — like today — the core values that make up what it means to be a ‘Redwoodian’ drove us to grow and exceed our capabilities as a team. We rallied, tackling some of the hardest problems across Product, Support, Sales and Marketing. Fast-forward, and while we have grown a lot as a team, I can see that it’s those same values that drive our success and the success of our customers.
Devin Gharibian-Saki, former Senior VP, Business Development and Strategy, Redwood Software
Despite some hurdles, Redwood stayed on the leaderboard. Driven by a culture of innovation, resilience and a team willing to wear any and all hats necessary.
Pioneers of SaaS
While many companies resisted the cloud, Redwood saw its potential early. In 2012, we rearchitected our platform and launched RunMyJobs by Redwood, long before most enterprises would even consider using SaaS for their emails.
“Our competitors believed that customers would never consider using a cloud-based automation platform,” says Devin. “Thirteen years later, we’re seeing customers even moving their ERPs to the cloud.”
This forward-thinking positioned Redwood as the first enterprise-grade, cloud-native workload automation provider years ahead of the rest.
Redwood has always been laser-focused on what we do best: automation. Not ‘just’ automation, but delivering tangible business outcomes for enterprises. This allowed us to stay ahead and keep innovating in areas that matter to growing organizations. ERP, mobile, human-in-the-loop, SaaS, Connector Catalog, Finance Automation: All are examples of innovations that Redwood came up with, in most cases, so far ahead of its time that the impact of these innovations were only felt years down the line.
Gerben Blom, Field CTO, Redwood Software
World-class support for automation beyond IT
Most automation vendors focus on IT-centric workflows: batch jobs, database updates, server provisioning. This is the easier and more convenient route. Redwood, however, saw the bigger picture, recognizing that automation is a horizontal capability that’s applicable to many processes and industries. The reality is that the vast majority of difficult challenges in organizations occur at the intersection between IT systems and business processes.
“Being automation experts and through our partnership with SAP, we were able to understand the challenges of business processes beyond the scope of core IT, which allowed us to develop capabilities that make it possible for our customers to address those challenges on both sides,” says Devin.
This unique angle made Redwood the go-to automation provider for enterprises running complex business applications. From finance operations to supply chain management, Redwood’s solutions ensure that every essential process runs as smoothly as the IT systems supporting it.
SAP and Redwood’s synergy empowers enterprises to modernize automation, accelerate digital transformation and achieve seamless operational scalability in the cloud. We value our partnership with Redwood in embracing these powerful technologies to bring world-class solutions to our mutual customers to stay at the forefront of innovation together.
Redwood has a history of driving industry trends rather than following them:
Incorporating low-code automation tools before “low-code” became a buzzword
Using flexible, real-time orchestration instead of static, calendar-based scheduling
Building finance automation solutions that deliver freedom — not just numbers
Today’s enterprises need seamless connection to remove friction across disparate systems, applications and processes. Traditional automation solutions leave gaps between business functions and require manual intervention or patchwork fixes to keep operations running. Redwood’s automation fabrics approach eliminates gaps and enables true orchestration, with workflows intelligently adapting to business changes in real time.
One breakthrough at a time
Redwood’s impact is evident in its milestones as much as its technology. Here’s what some of the Redwood team had to say about their proudest moments.
“Seeing Redwood Software at the right top of the 2024 Gartner® Magic Quadrant™ for SOAPs has been a huge achievement. It shows the result of 15 years of hard work, dedication and innovation, moving from the right top of the left bottom quadrant in 2009 straight up to the top of the leaderboard. This is a true team effort for which we have to thank all the team members, past and present, for their contributions.” – Gerben Blom, Field CTO, Redwood Software
“Redwood hitting a major revenue milestone that would’ve seemed impossible three years ago.” – Shak Akhtar, Executive Director, Financial Transformation, Redwood Software
“There have been many proud moments over the years: winning globally known brands as customers in a huge team effort or delivering a major new product to the market. But if I look into recent times, being SAP’s #1 store partner for two consecutive years and being acquired by two of the largest and most successful private equity firms on the planet would be my choices.” – Devin Gharibian-Saki, Senior VP, Business Development and Strategy, Redwood Software
“Joining forces with Vista Equity Partners and Warburg Pincus. The wisdom, experience and operating expertise of these two leading global technology investors will accelerate our vision to unleash human potential through the transformative power of automation.” – Kevin Greene, Redwood Software CEO
Rooted in legacy, inspired by possibility
With AI, cloud and business automation converging, Redwood is leading the charge into the next era of automation.
The new approach to automation is one that’s purpose-built for a best-of-breed application world but also provides the flexibility to work across any IT infrastructure you may encounter. It’s why automation will become the pervasive operation system fabric powering today’s modern enterprises.
Kevin Greene, Redwood Software CEO
Today, 28% of the Fortune 500 and 40% of the Fortune 50 rely on Redwood to orchestrate their mission-critical processes. As AI adds new layers of complexity and, frankly, concern about the future, Redwood’s automation solutions are the glue holding enterprise operations together through it all.
Redwood has spent three decades quietly powering some of the world’s largest enterprises. It has navigated dot-com crashes, industry shifts and technological revolutions while staying ahead of the curve.
Chelsea Williams is Senior Copywriter at Redwood. With 20 years of writing experience and a decade in marketing, Chelsea has held varied roles, including educator, freelance writer and inbound marketer. Each shaped her keen ability to craft content that informs, persuades and engages.
An AWAI-certified Master Copywriter with training in brand strategy and microcopy, she blends creativity with strategy to engage audiences. Based in Orlando, Florida, Chelsea is raising two active sons and spends her free time practicing yoga.
1GARTNER is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.2Magic Quadrant is a trademark of Gartner, Inc. and/or its affiliates.
