NelsonHall recently caught up with managed cloud and hosting vendor Rackspace. We discussed Rackspace’s May 2018 acquisition of a Salesforce consulting and systems integration partner, RelationEdge, and how the acquisition fits into its plans. Who is RelationEdge? RelationEdge (RE) was founded in 2013, in San Diego, CA. The company is positioned as a business process reen[...]

  In the past five years, NelsonHall has observed software testing services vendors adapting their portfolio around digital testing, focusing initially on agile and DevOps, and with a sense of urgency given the accelerating adoption of agile development methodologies. The transformation towards DevOps/continuous testing is ongoing, with most vendors now having their DevOps testing buil[...]

    By Dominique Raviart & Rachael Stormonth Deutsche Telekom’s Capital Market Day 2018 included a session in which the new CEO of T-Systems Adel Al-Saleh explained how he intends to turn around the Systems Solutions market unit (T-Systems). Back to onshore vendor profitability standards by 2021 Al-Saleh’s message to investors is clear: the priority is [...]

  Tech Mahindra recently briefed NelsonHall on its new model-based testing (MBT) offering, Automated Test Assurance (ATA). To date, enterprises have shown interest in MBT technology, but take up has been low, partly because they had already invested in creating test cases and test scripts and were reluctant to make a further investment in creating a new a set of process models/diagrams[...]

  When NelsonHall published the first crowdtesting vendor evaluation in the industry in 2017, it was striking to see how the main crowdtesting players had different strategies and were developing their services in different directions. And crowdtesting continues to surprise by bringing novelty to the testing service industry – an industry essentially based on process and, increas[...]

  In the past three years, testing service vendors have been looking at how to adopt more automation and apply AI to testing. Accenture, meanwhile, has been approaching things from a different angle, looking at how to test AI software itself rather than applying AI to the delivery of testing services. Here I look briefly at Accenture's approach to AI testing, which used a two-ph[...]

  I have touched several times on how AI is being used in the context of software testing for reducing the number of test cases, optimizing coverage, and estimating the number of defects in an upcoming release of an application. And, as AI technology is becoming pervasive, we are expecting more use cases to emerge for software testing soon. We recently had a discussion with Santa Cl[...]

  We recently spoke with QA specialist SQS about how its acquisition of Moorhouse Consulting and its own acquisition by Assystem Technologies (AT) are each supporting its management consulting (MC) services ambitions. SQS continues to deploy its MC units across geographies Firstly, Moorhouse Consulting. This U.K.-based company brings in ~140 consultants and £22m in annual r[...]

  There is an abundance of IoT platforms on the market. Many technology firms (e.g. IBM Software, AWS, PTC/Thingworx, Microsoft), major manufacturing firms (GE, Siemens, ABB, Bosch, Schneider Electric) and some large IT services vendors (e.g. Accenture, TCS, and Atos via Worldline) have invested in their own IoT platform products. History is repeating itself, as the build or buy que[...]

  We were recently briefed by Accenture on the creation of Industry X.0 within its Accenture Digital organization. The discussion far exceeded the scope we were expecting of Industrial IoT, and it signaled Accenture’s expansion in Engineering and R&D discussions (ER&D), with bold ambitions not just from a product design perspective, but also from a manufacturing and produ[...]

  We continue to assess the impact of AI on software testing services in its various forms (ML, NLP, deep learning), talking to the major suppliers in the industry. Vendors have been accelerating their investment in AI technologies to make sense of the wealth of data available in defect management tools, production logs, and ITSM software tools, creating use cases – mostly around[...]

  T-Systems recently held an analyst event which specifically covered the IoT capabilities of parent company Deutsche Telekom AG Group (DTAG) and its own Digital Division. Here are the key takeaways. IoT Connectivity Services IoT is clearly important for DTAG and for T-Systems for connectivity reasons: NelsonHall estimates that most of its IoT revenues come from traditional SIM c[...]

  We recently met with the senior management of Appirio, acquired by Wipro in November 2016, for an update on developments in 2017 and priorities for 2018. As part of Wipro, Appirio has been able to accelerate the development of its digital consulting units and its investment in IP and accelerators, working alongside Wipro’s industry units, and also to expand into other geographi[...]

  Here I look back at how M&A activity has impacted the IT services industry over the past year and make a few broad predictions for the type of activity to be expected in the next twelve months. 2016 had been marked by some large M&A announcements, with: Hardware companies moving out of services:  HPE announcing the sale of Enterprise Services to CSC (completed i[...]

  In something of a surprise move, Assystem Technologies (AT) recently announced its intention to acquire Germany-headquartered but LSE-listed SQS. AT is offering 825 pence per share, valuing SQS at £281m, and has secured (on an irrevocable basis) 31.4% of the shares of SQS from founders, executive management, and board members. This is a generous offer - 56% over SQS’ shar[...]

Atos has made an unsolicited offer for security, SIM cards, and payment cards technology vendor Gemalto. The offer is sizeable at €4.3bn (plus Gemalto’s net debt of €938m at end of H1 2017) financed in cash. It runs until December 15. Gemalto is another major acquisition for Atos: in its fiscal year ended June 30, 2017, Gemalto generated revenues of ~€3bn, with an EBITD[...]

  ER&D vendor Altran yesterday announced the acquisition of India-centric Silicon Valley-headquartered Aricent. Altran will be paying $2.0bn for Aricent through a capital increase of €0.75bn, the remaining ~€1bn in debt. In the year ending June 30, 2017, Aricent had revenues of $687m and an EBITDA margin of 27.9%. This is a significant acquisition for Altran, streng[...]

  CSS Corp recently briefed NelsonHall on the work it does around accessibility testing in the U.S. and about a suite of three accelerators it recently introduced for meeting the requirements of the U.S. American Disability Act (ADA) of 2010. What Is ADA? One of the aims of ADA is to make documents, websites and mobile apps more accessible to people suffering from visual, movemen[...]

  We recently caught up with Infosys to discuss where its Infosys Validation Solutions (IVS) testing practice is currently investing. This is a follow-up to a similar discussion we had with Infosys back in July 2016 that centered on applying AI and making sense of the data that client organizations have (see here). Our most recent discussion looked at technologies such as AI, chatbo[...]

  DXC Technology recently held an analyst day in the U.K., its first since being ‘born’ on April 1. It is still early days for this young organization and the integration continues (though there was little mention of this at the event). In its recent investor calls, DXC Technology has emphasized actions to strip out costs, apply financial discipline, and invest in next[...]