A strong end to 2014 for Cognizant, with the disruption of Q2 results (due to client specific issues) now a fading memory. Q4 2014 revenues were up 16.4% y/y, up 13% y/y excluding Trizetto. And non-GAAP operating margin of 19.4% was within its targeted range. Q4 2014 revenue breakdown by vertical (and actual revenue growth) was: Financial services: $1,121m (+12.4%), with strong gr[...]

Analysis of NelsonHall’s U.K. outsourcing contracts for 2014 shows that outsourcing is becoming more sophisticated in a number of key areas across both service delivery and contracting. Within service delivery: The role of Cloud was increasingly evident with for example the first HR BPO contracts based on Workday software emerging in BPO and IaaS contracts in support of SMEs becoming c[...]

Q4 2014 results from the top five U.S. headquartered securities services firms indicate that revenue growth for securities and custody services is slowing down. The two largest global custodians, BNY Mellon and State Street, along with Citibank, reported revenue decline in calendar year Q4 2014. The figures below show change in securities services revenue versus the prior quarter (q/q[...]

By Amy Gurchensky, Liz Rennie and Gary Bragar With total HRO service growth in the high single digits in 2014, service providers are growing both organically and inorganically to meet clients’ needs. The primary reasons for M&A and partnerships across HRO service lines were to enhance service delivery capability (60%) and support geographic expansion (40%). Here we take a closer look [...]

Overall IBM Group revenues in 2014 declined 6% (-1% in CC and excluding divestitures). However, IBM is in the midst of a major adjustment of its portfolio. In line with this, the company is reporting $25bn in revenues (and 16% revenue growth) in 2014 (out of a total of $92.8bn) from its "strategic imperatives". IBM's acquisition of Softlayer, where it continues to invest strongly,[...]

CGI CEO Michael Roach describes Q1 FY 2015 results as “strong”– and yet revenue was down in every region apart from the U.K. (putting aside the 0.9% CC growth in APAC to CDN$108.7m).  The 169% book-to-bill ratio achieved this quarter looks a lot less impressive when the CDN$2bn renewal with Bell Canada is excluded, when the global book-to-bill goes down to 90%[...]

“A lot has happened in the last 90 days and overall we're pleased with where we ended the year. We're reporting solid results that in some places exceeded expectations” Ursula Burns. Q4 summary: Services revenue was $2,725m, up 1.5% y/ y, and up 3% in constant currency: BPO CC growth was 4% (up from 2% in Q3) with growth in commercial healthcare payer, electronic[...]

TCS has briefed NelsonHall on the recent launch of its DevOps related IP, Non-Production Environment Tracking and Release Automation (NETRA). With NETRA, TCS Assurance Services Unit (ASU), the main testing unit of TCS, is pursuing its strategy originated with Intelligent Testing Systems (ITS) to develop broad-reaching IPs, encompassing open source software, COTS, and TCS-developed accelerators.[...]

TCS Globally: High Market Cap, High Brand Value With over $15bn in revenues in CY 2014 (and FY 2015 revenues likely to be in the region of $15.5bn) TCS is not only one of the largest, fastest growing and most profitable service providers but is now also a top 5 IT services player (*) on the global stage. And TCS is also the most profitable of the Top 5, with an EBIT margin currently tracking at[...]

This week NelsonHall held its quarterly IT outsourcing (ITO) Index webcast. We have conducted these calls for the last six years to monitor developments in ITO from a quantitative perspective. When we introduced the Index, ITO had largely moved from full outsourcing to a selective outsourcing approach, and Indian vendors were deploying their land and expand strategy with the occasional one-off meg[...]

By Amy Gurchensky, Liz Rennie, Gary Bragar 2014 was a busy year for HRO with ~60 partnerships, mergers and acquisitions combined. We now take a look at what to expect in 2015 and beyond for each HRO service line, including service offerings, market developments, and growth. MPHRO driven by continued shift to cloud-based platforms The Multi-Process HRO (MPHRO) market will grow with a mi[...]

Tech Mahindra has agreed to acquire SOFGEN to enhance its core banking systems integration (build, run, operate) capabilities. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of March. Swiss-headquartered SOFGEN is a specialist in Avaloq and Temenos platforms and also has capabilities in TCS BaNCS and Misys. SOFGEN has 450 employees, including >70[...]

NelsonHall, the leading global BPO and IT outsourcing analyst firm, has today launched a new tool to assist strategic sourcing managers in assessing vendor capability in Application Outsourcing (AO) services. This NelsonHall Vendor Evaluation and Assessment Tool (NEAT) is now available to NelsonHall clients, and is also available for a period free-of-charge to buy-side organizations through Nel[...]

Tech Mahindra recently updated NelsonHall on its performance engineering (TMPE) capabilities.  The comments below complement an article on TMPE we wrote in January (see here). TMPE, part of Tech Mahindra’s Testing Services practice, is in high growth mode, having increased its headcount from 450 in early 2014 to 800 currently. Much of this growth has been driven by cross-sell[...]

I recently visited San Pedro Sula, Honduras, with CMS vendor Alorica. This nearshore America delivery location offers a low cost, educated workforce with strong native neutral Spanish delivery, as well as emerging support for English and Portuguese. The country is in the process of making English its official second language. Honduras, and specifically the city of San Pedro Sula, have battled n[...]

NIIT Technologies recently briefed NelsonHall on its testing capabilities. Headquartered in Noida, NIIT Technologies had FY 2014 revenues (ending March 31, 2014) of ~$389m, with an operating margin of 15.2%.  H1 FY 2015 revenues were ~$189m. Headcount at the end of H1 FY 2015 was 8.7k. The company is an unusual Indian Outsourcing Service Provider (IOSP) with a specialization i[...]

Accenture Q1 FY 2015 results are out today: 7.3% reported net revenue growth to $7,896m, operating margin at 15.0%. Full details are here. Accenture CEO Pierre Nanterme opened the analyst call referring to an “excellent” first quarter and saying “I am extremely pleased with our results”. And here’s why: The 10% topline growth in local currency is the best [...]

In the early hours of this morning, Atos announced it is acquiring the IT outsourcing business of Xerox. Full details of the acquisition are here. Atos is ending 2014 with a bang. Having completed the integration of Siemens IT Solutions & Services pretty darned quickly (certainly far faster and more effectively than naysayers would have predicted), it has proceeded this year to the car[...]

Last week, U.S.-based Intuit acquired U.K.-based Acrede to expand into global payroll services. Terms of the acquisition were not provided except that closing is expected by Q1 2015. Inuit provides business and financial services, including accounting services to small and mid-size U.S. companies. Prior to the acquisition Intuit provided payroll solely to the U.S., and it will now be able to pr[...]

Tech Mahindra Testing Services (TMTS) has updated NelsonHall on its DevOps capabilities. TMTS continues to work with CA Technologies around this offering, largely around service virtualization (SV), application release management (ARA) and together with other ISVs/open source software around agile testing/continuous integration (CI). (For more information on the offering, please refer to the pr[...]