John Laherty, Senior Analyst with NelsonHall’s IT Services practice, talks about his recently completed global research project on ‘Cognitive IT Infrastructure Management’, which covers latest developments in next-generation IT infrastructure and workplace services, including the use of AI, client requirements, and vendor selection criteria.     [...]

  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[...]

  Readers of the NelsonHall Quarterly Updates on Tech Mahindra over the last two years will be aware of initiatives that have taken place to turn around the LCC business it acquired, and also of recent investments such as a minority stake in Altiostar. This blog looks at some of the other sectors in which Tech Mahindra operates, and at some broad developments around service delivery. [...]

NelsonHall recently attended Computacenter’s analyst summit in Hamburg, Germany, its first such event since 2014. Key takeaways are that the company is now focusing on portfolio consolidation and workplace services opportunities for Win10 migration, and on geographic expansion, specifically in the U.S. and Germany. Let's look at initiatives driving the evolution of Computacenter&r[...]

  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[...]

NelsonHall recently attended the Atos global analyst event in Boston, where we were keen to get an update on topics including: Atos’ strategy for growth in North America, which has new leadership following a rather disappointing 2017 Recent developments and short-term priorities for offerings in the Digital Transformation Factory. It appears to us that, nearly three years af[...]

  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[...]

  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[...]

  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[...]

  John Laherty, Senior Analyst with NelsonHall’s IT Services practice, talks about his recently completed global research project on ‘Next Generation End-User Computing Services’, which covers latest developments in build and run workplace services. Here he touches on EUCS market size and growth, key drivers, and major trends – including the shift towards person[...]

  To date, many digital transformation initiatives have been primarily focused on customer-facing technologies. Changing customer preferences and the rise of new digitally native competitors have driven incumbent firms to see customer experience as a source of competitive advantage or as table stakes to maintain relevance. In NelsonHall’s recent survey of IT service buyers across[...]

  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[...]

  David McIntire, IT Services Research Director, talks about NelsonHall's recently completed project looking at the attitudes and intentions of IT services buyers. Based on interviews with ~1,000 buyers across 17 industry sectors, the project analyses buyers' key business and IT priorities, digital initiatives, IT spending projections, and the characteristics they look for in&n[...]

  NelsonHall recently had a briefing with senior management at Getronics to discuss the merger of Connectis under the Getronics portfolio. In this short blog, I look at what the Connectis business brings to the wider Getronics group, the aspirational growth targets that have been set by new CEO Nana Baffour, and some of the key focus areas for Getronics moving forward. Baffour becam[...]

  NelsonHall is conducting an analysis of the needs of IT services clients to understand their IT and business priorities and how the growth of digital is impacting their business. In a survey of ~1,000 IT services clients across 17 industries and every region of the world, NelsonHall has identified distinct patterns of user intentions, both in terms of how clients plan to change their[...]

This month, NelsonHall has attended the IBM Services analyst/adviser events in New York and Paris and we noted a distinct evolution in emphasis, with a much closer alignment between IBM's two services divisions. In recent years, IBM’s Global Business Services (GBS) and GTS businesses have been somewhat in the shadows of its Cognitive Solutions segment, although together they rep[...]