We recently had a briefing with Topcoder, an entity acquired by Wipro in 2016. Topcoder is known for its crowdsourcing capabilities and its extensive community network and recognized for the wide range of services it offers across several areas of technology services, with a focus on agile development, digital design, and algorithms/analytics. Topcoder’s four main operational principl[...]

  As a follow-up to our research project focused on SAP HANA and S/4HANA services that was completed last fall, NelsonHall recently had a briefing with Infosys to take an in-depth look at components of their migration toolset and understand how it is automating the activities of existing SAP clients migrating to HANA or S/4HANA. SAP is focused on speed and agility in HANA and S/4HAN[...]

  In this, the second of two articles on GDPR, I look at how IT services vendors can help companies meet GDPR compliance in several areas. You can read the first article, ‘The Impact & Benefits of GDPR for Organizations’, here. Application services Application services can help organizations in ensuring that new and legacy applications meet the GDPR articles perta[...]

Relative to other HR services, the application of intelligent automation in benefits administration is lagging, but is slowly making progress.  With respect to RPA, Conduent and Alight are among the first movers, with both using bots for manual calculations in pension administration. In addition, Alight has deployed bots for low-level transactional work that is typically offshored, and in[...]

  As H1 2017 comes to a close, it’s a good time to reflect on recent key activity and where the market is headed for the rest of the year and beyond. Here, I round up what’s trending now in payroll, benefits administration, recruitment, and learning. Payroll The most common theme in the payroll market is global and multi-country activity. NelsonHall estimates tha[...]

  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[...]

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[...]

  Unisys recently held an analyst and advisor day in New York, entitled UnisysNOW. However, with a relatively new leadership team in place and a broad corporate transformation underway, the focus of the event was not so much on the current shape of Unisys’ business but on the company’s aspirations and plans for achieving them, encapsulated in a new tagline: Securing Your To[...]

Unsurprisingly, given its investment in, and focus on, Watson, IBM declared at a recent Alliances Analyst Day that 2016 is 'the year of cognitive'. The intent of the meeting was to look broadly at how IBM is working with its key alliance partners, including SAP, Oracle, and Microsoft, and it is clear that IBM’s focus is on incorporating cognitive capabilities and broadening th[...]

The digital economy is significantly increasing expectations for speed of delivery as organizations strive to compete with agile, digital-native competitors.  In response, IT service providers and their clients are shifting to a continuous delivery approach that incorporates design thinking, agile application development & test, and DevOps – all connected and aligned with the desire[...]

Four years ago, at the time of the London 2012 Olympics and Paralympic Games, NelsonHall reported on the work Atos does for the International Olympic Committee (IOC) though its Major Events unit. See our previous commentary here. This week we visited its center in Barcelona to get an update on the work it is doing for the Rio Games starting next month, The Olympic Games remain a fantastic o[...]

Sopra Steria announced recently its 2015 results (click here for more information on the recent results). The results contained a number of surprises. Our key take-aways from the results are discussed below. Strong Financial Performance in French Operations in Spite of Merger Credit is due to Sopra Steria’s management in managing the rapid turnaround of Steria France in spite of i[...]

CSC has just laid out the financial targets of the standalone business which will retain the CSC moniker when the U.S federal company, CRSA, breaks off.  As well as CSC’s global commercial business, it includes non-U.S. public sector businesses (~$700m revenues in FY15). In its FY15 (ending March 31, 2015) this part of CSC achieved revenues of $8.1bn, and an adjusted operating margin[...]

On July 3, Infosys announced it has been awarded a multi-year application development and management (ADM) services contract by Allied Irish Banks (AIB). As a strategic partner to AIB, Infosys will: Provide application development and management, and transformation and innovation services Set up a 200-seat facility in Dublin to house staff who will be transferring from [...]

At Cognizant’s European analyst event in Berlin, the topic of digital transformation and in particular its Horizon 3 services dominated discussions. Horizon 3 services now represent a NelsonHall estimated 10% of revenues (~$1.0bn in 2014). Horizon 3 includes new services such as digital services as well as new business models and new sectors/new geographies. Digital Transformation Cogn[...]

IBM recently held its annual IBM Alliances event, focusing on SAP and Oracle (other major IBM-wide partners include Microsoft, Infor, Cisco, Juniper Networks and Citrix). IBM Alliances manages major relationships with technology vendors that cross several IBM service lines, e.g. GBS, GTS, Systems & Technology, and Software. Those seven major partnerships are significant and command ~15% of ove[...]

As part of its Analyst Day, Unisys provided NelsonHall an update on its end-user computing services activities. The company is aiming to enhance its end-user experience, de-emphasizing its traditional service desk approach and aiming to add alternative channels for connecting end-users and support personnel. As part of this initiative, the company is spreading the usage of its Tech Caf&eacut[...]

Wipro has updated NelsonHall on its ServiceNXT initiative. ServiceNXT aims to increase productivity in both IT infrastructure management and application management contracts. ServiceNXT is based on: Usage of Wipro IP and recommended COTS tools across the client’s operation for various tasks including ITSM, change management, demand management, problem management Analytics, based on d[...]

CSC recently briefed NelsonHall on its SAP Next-Gen offering, unveiled in June 2014. CSC’s SAP practice is relatively large within CSC (headcount 7.7k, ~10% of CSC’s overall 80k). CSC has recently engaged in a service portfolio refresh to increase its differentiation through more specialized SAP-related services. This differentiation relies on adoption of automation tools and enhanc[...]

Sopra recently updated NelsonHall on its application management (AM) capabilities. In 2013 Sopra generated ~€393m revenues from AM, or ~29% of its total revenues. The company is a top application management vendor in its domestic market, along with Accenture, Capgemini, Atos CGI, and IBM. Key AM clients of Sopra include Airbus, Orange, SFR, Crédit Agricole, EDF, Auchan, SNCF, BN Pariba[...]