In a surprise transaction, Office Depot announced the acquisition of U.S.-based CompuCom, an end-user computer specialist. The price is significant: ~$1bn, including $750m in cash and 45m shares of Office Depot, with the seller, PE Thomas H. Lee Partners, owning 8% of the share of Office Depot. Despite revenues of $10.6bn, Office Depot has a market cap of just ~$2bn. With the acqu[...]

    I recently talked with Wipro about its crowdtesting capabilities. Here, Wipro has a different positioning and service portfolio from crowdtesting pure-plays, with a stronger focus on automation frameworks (with its mobile website and app testing framework), and access to mobile device labs. QaaS: an aggregation of testing offerings at scale QaaS is an aggregation of s[...]

  This month, NelsonHall will publish its annual software testing services report, focusing this time on digital testing, DevOps, and agile testing services. The main areas of the study include: Mobile testing UX testing, which is quickly expanding from its regulation-led accessibility testing offering to usability testing DevOps/continuous testing, which reflects i[...]

  We recently met with Sopra Steria to discuss the broad topic of intellectual capital and accelerators. We came away impressed with Sopra Steria’s approach that is both very new (launched early 2017) and also broader in focus than technical accelerators. Earlier this year Sopra Steria launched its Digital Enablers initiative. Digital Enablers has several aspects: creatin[...]

  Cognizant recently hosted NelsonHall in its mobile center of expertise in Grenoble, France, to discuss how it is expanding its Quality Engineering & Assurance (QE&A) practice. QE&A is a very significant practice within Cognizant - NelsonHall estimates that it represents over 14% of Cognizant’s global headcount. Unsurprisingly, digital, DevOps, and agile are [...]

  In the last few years Accenture has executed a wholescale reshaping of its portfolio towards what it terms ‘The New’ (digital-, cloud-, security-related services) and has managed to keep ahead of the pack in staying relevant. NelsonHall recently attended an event hosted by Accenture Technology on the theme of innovation-led applications services. Accenture Has Repivote[...]

Atos recently briefed NelsonHall on M-Frame, IP the company has recently launched focusing on model-based testing (MBT) and integrating it with test data creation, performance, and security testing. M-Frame looks to remove several inhibitors that exist around MBT: complexity of the different MBT software tools, and lack of a business case for building and maintaining the UML diagrams used for MBT [...]

  CGI recently briefed NelsonHall on its capabilities for the manufacturing sector and how it is addressing opportunities around digital manufacturing/Industry 4.0. CGI’s service portfolio for digital manufacturing addresses the manufacturing sector also other industries with similar needs around supply chain and distribution operations, including retail/distribution, and life[...]

  There continues to be momentum in software testing, with many IT services vendors investing in automating different steps in the software development lifecycle (SDLC), notably through the creation of testing platforms. Platforms, involving the integration of open source software, COTS, and proprietary accelerators, are redefining the testing industry. Gradually, vendors are expanding[...]

We recently talked to HPE Technology Services (TS) about its recent Pointnext branding campaign. Despite the divestment of its Enterprise Services unit, HPE has retained very significant IT services capabilities, provided through Pointnext. Technology Services is a sizable unit with FY16 revenues of ~$7.9bn (for the period ending 31 October 2016), and has a headcount of 25k across 80 countries[...]

We have reported several times on the service offering of the Performance Engineering unit within Tech Mahindra’s Testing Services business. Tech Mahindra Performance Engineering (TMPE) recently briefed NelsonHall about its work in positioning performance engineering within DevOps through its CONPASS platform. Automating Performance Testing in the Context of DevOps One big element [...]

  We recently met with the head of Capgemini’s Digital Manufacturing unit to get a perspective on the challenges in manufacturing and how Capgemini is helping to address them. Digital Manufacturing (DM), one of Capgemini’s newer strategic offerings, is a virtual service line across Capgemini units, having both portfolio and delivery responsibility. So What Does Digita[...]

  In a previous blog, I looked at L&T Infotech’s efforts in automation, and in particular around data, from an analytics and test data management point of view (see the blog here). In this blog, I take a look at recent advances L&T Infotech (LTI) has made in User Experience (UX) testing that go way beyond traditional testing approaches. UX Testing Expanding to Crowd Te[...]

  NelsonHall has been advocating for some time that software testing services vendors should focus on automating full testing processes or testing functions, and no longer be solely focused on standalone accelerators/point solutions. This is commonly called a ‘platform’ approach, and we define platforms as pre-integrated/interfaced COTS, accelerators and open source softwar[...]

In the past ten years, we have seen most IT service vendors’ software testing divisions and the testing pure-plays rebadge from independent verification and validation (IVV) to quality assurance (QA) services. Vendors have been very active in expanding their service portfolio (non-functional, digital testing) and in leveraging IP and accelerators. Nevertheless, there still is a gap be[...]

M&A activity in IT services is set to take a new direction in 2017. Here, I reflect on M&A activity by the largest IT services vendors in 2016, with its emphasis on mega deals, and look ahead to 2017, which is set to be the year of digital & security tuck-in acquisitions. Large M&As in 2016: IT Conglomerates and Defense Firms Divest IT Services Arms Large-scale M&am[...]

  Here I take a quick look at IT services markets in 2017 against the backdrop of widespread political uncertainty, with predictions for how IT services spending will be impacted. Political Uncertainties in U.S., U.K., Germany, France 2017 is starting out as a year of political uncertainty, with lack of visibility in the U.S. on the Trump administration’s plans, in the U.K.[...]

  I recently talked with T-Systems about its digital strategy, and here I take a look at the organization’s Digital Division, and specifically at its Internet of Things (IoT) initiatives. Digital transformation is a strategic offering for T-Systems’ parent Deutsche Telekom group (DTAG). The company set up its Digital Division in 2015 with the intention of aggregating exp[...]

Dell Services is a strategic acquisition, though an expensive one Yesterday, NTT DATA Inc. closed its acquisition of Dell Services, seven months after its initial announcement. The acquired entity, now called NTT DATA Services on an interim basis, has some obvious benefits. For example, it: More than doubles NTT DATA Inc.’s revenues from $1.7bn to over $4bn Significantly s[...]

  Cigniti, and its subsidiary Gallop, recently launched Migrate 2 Selenium (M2S), a migration tool that reengineers automated test cases (test scripts) from software testing COTS such as HPE UFT, to open source software such as Selenium. The non-digital world uses commercial testing products Migrate 2 Selenium is not just another accelerator. We think the intention behind M2S, in[...]