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[...]

Tieto's Q2 2014 revenues were €386.4m, down 7.3% y/y, and down 1.3% y/y at constant currency. (for full details see here)  Q2 2014 revenue (and growth both on an actual and CC/organic basis) by service line was: Managed Services: €132m (+5%, +9%). Half of the CC organic growth this quarter resulted from hardware reselling as part of a large IT infrastruct[...]

TCS recently briefed NelsonHall on the intelligent testing system (ITS) it launched in April 2013 in an effort to automate tasks across the software testing lifecycle. It intends to  expand usage of test automation from test execution to include other tasks e.g. test design and test support services such as test data management and service virtualization. ITS integrates COTS tools e.g. Inf[...]

In the world of IT services, professional services, e.g. consulting, systems integration and application development, are a cyclical business. Spending growth – or decline – depends very much on GDP growth, corporate moral and investment intentions. Professional services growth has varied since on a quarterly basis, since 2008, between -8% to +9%, on a worldwide basis. IT outsourcin[...]

Sopra and CS Communication & Systèmes, a French IT services vendor, have announced a multi-tiered agreement: CS is to proceed to a €12m convertible bond issuance (maturity 5 years, conversion price per share: €3.6; interest rate: 4%; delivery: July 2014). As part of this issuance, Sopra agreed with DUNA & Cie, th[...]

Bloomberg reports that Sprint and T-Mobile U.S.A. are close to a merger whereby Sprint would acquire T-Mobile U.S. for $40 a share (up 17% from the current $34), valuing the company to $31bn. Deutsche Telekom (DTAG), which holds a 67% stake in T-Mobile U.S.A., would receive 27.5% in cash, 27.5% in Sprint stock and retain a 12% stake in T-Mobile U.S.A. T-Mobile U.S.A. had 2013 revenues of $24.4b[...]

Tech Mahindra Testing Services (TMTS) recently provided insights on the work it is doing to expand automation outside of test execution to newer areas. Part of the company’s rationale in increasing the level of automation is based on statistics showing testing teams suffer testing cycle delays regularly, representing 31% to 69% of their testing time. Testing delay result from a variety of[...]

Atos is to acquire France-headquartered technology vendor Bull for €620m in an all cash transaction. Atos offers €4.9 per Bull share, a premium of 22% over May 23’s closure price of €4.01. The offer is conditional on Atos receiving 50% and 1 shares. The largest shareholders of Bull, Crescendo Industries and Pothar Investments, which own a 24.2% stake in Bull, ha[...]

Capgemini held its 2014 investor and analyst day this week. For the first time since the beginning of the 2008-2013 crisis, the company has talked about organic growth, a significant development on its focus in recent years on margin improvement. Capgemini’s guidance for 2014 is organic revenue growth of 2% to 4%. The company has now shared a mid-term target of 5% to 7% organic growth. This [...]

Sopra Group is to acquire Steria for an all-share transaction valuing Steria at €722m. The acquisition is presented as a merger of equals. Sopra's rationale for the acquisition includes: Expanding its geographical presence from France to the U.K., Germany and Norway Gaining a new service portfolio in BPO services and IM. Sopra is to launch a public exchange [...]

NelsonHall recently attended an Atos analyst summit which provided a follow-up to the 2014-6 three-year plan first outlined last November (see our blog “Atos Unveils 2016 Financial Objectives”). As a reminder, the financial targets for IT services are: 2014-2016 CAGR of 5% with half of this growth to come from acquisition A 100 to 200 bps improvement in adjusted operating margi[...]

NelsonHall recently attended Computacenter's second ever analyst and advisor day.  The company highlighted recent achievements, its connection with hardware and software reselling and its immediate strategic priorities. CEO Mike Norris referred back to 2002 and the acquisition of Compaq by HP, which led to it losing a major source of revenues and[...]

T-Systems' parent company, Deutsche Telekom, has announced its T-Systems 2015+ strategic plan. T-Systems 2015+ aims to increase the EBIT profitability of the company and help it resume organic growth by 2017.  Principles of T-Systems 2015+ rely on a change in it service portfolio mix: Stopping of unprofitable offerings Adoption of more standardized service offerings, which will[...]

CSC and HCL Technologies have announced a strategic partnership for application modernization and IT cloud migration services. The two companies are to: Offer application modernization services around migrating applications to the cloud. The service will rely on several IPs, including the recently CSC-acquired ServiceMesh Enhance their existing vertical-specific app modernization o[...]

Capgemini Group together with its subsidiary Sogeti has launched a new offering, Global Engineering Services (GES), a product engineering/R&D services offering. The new offering focuses on four main services: mechanical engineering, embedded systems, PLM software-related services and technical documentation.  Capgemini's capabilities in PES/R&D services were consoderably e[...]

SQS recently briefed NelsonHall on its planned acquisition of a majority stake in software testing pure-play Thinksoft Global for €17.5m in cash. What will Thinksoft mean for SQS? More than double its Indian delivery capability: Thinksoft will bring in 800 FTEs and a center in Chennai. SQS currently has a center in Pune with 700 FTEs Retail banking client base: retail banking: acco[...]

Cigniti Technologies is looking to achieve ~$100m in revenues by FY 2016 (the year ending March 31, 2016. The milestone targets on this three-year journey are ~$50m in FY 2014 and $70m in FY 2015. To give a sense of the scale of this ambition, Cigniti’s FY 2013 revenues were ~$27m. Headcount growth targets are from the current 800 to ~1,200 by end FY 2014, and ~2,500 by fiscal 2016. [...]

Amazon Web Services has launched Amazon WorkSpaces, a public cloud-hosted standard virtual desktop offering. The offering mirrors the IaaS Amazon EC2 offerings of Amazon Web Services, with shared IT infrastructures, multi-tenancy, fast provisioning and opex models. Amazon Workspaces features include: A choice of different CPUs, memory, storage Storage is attached to each virtu[...]

Atos has unveiled its Ambitions 2016 plan in whch it has detailed how two of its key service lines (Managed Services and Systems Integration) will evolve over the next three years. Managed Services Managed Services (MS) is planning to grow at a 5% 2013-2016 CAGR with a slight organic growth. The unit has stabilized (organic growth 2011: +1.7% ; 2012; +2.4%;[...]

Atos has unveiled its financial objectives for its Worldline unit. The company is to float Worldline by mid-2014, while keeping a majority stake in the company. Proceeds from the IPO are to finance organic growth and especially acquisitions. Financial objectives for the 2013-2017 period include: Revenue growth of 5% to 7% (2013-2017 CAGR) all organic (2012 revenues €1,066m, +5%; 2013[...]