IBM Consulting recently held a two-day analyst event for its European business (a significant region for IBM Consulting). Against an ongoing backdrop of uncertainty for client organizations in many sectors, the tone overall is quietly confident, buoyed by recent client wins and progress in a number of internal initiatives. At a similar event seven months ago, there were clear emph[...]

  NelsonHall recently attended an IBM Security analyst day in London. This covered recent developments such as IBM’s acquisition of Polar Security on May 16th to support the monitoring of data across hybrid cloud estates, and watsonx developments to support the move away from rule-based security. However, a big focus of the event was the subject of risk. For the last few years[...]

  IBM Consulting recently held its first analyst and advisor event in Europe since IBM’s spin-off of its Global Technology Services infrastructure business (now Kyndryl) and the renaming of the former IBM Global Business Services division to IBM Consulting just over a year ago. When IBM had announced its intended spin-off of the GTS division in October 2020, new CEO Arvind Kri[...]

  Following a year in development, IBM’s Talent Transformation division and EY’s Organization & Workforce, Mobility, Payroll Operate and HR Transformation division have announced a strategic alliance. The alliance enables the two organizations to co-create talent solutions and offers a new Center of Excellence for Talent, which could be a game-changer in terms of the HR[...]

  IBM recently announced its acquisition of Salesforce Platinum Consulting partner, Waeg. The company, whose name means “wave” in old English, expands IBM’s Salesforce service presence in Europe and is IBM GBS’ second Salesforce services acquisition in 2021, following 7Summits in the U.S. It is also GBS’ fifth acquisition since IBM announced the intended s[...]

  We recently talked to IBM GBS regarding its acquisition of 7Summits. After years of limited GBS M&A activity, IBM has been increasing its investment level in this business. With the planned divestment of most of its GTS business, GBS is core to IBM Services. Since October 2020, GBS has made five transactions across cloud, payments, SAP, and Salesforce. The 7Summits acquisition[...]

  In recent years, many IT services firms have been aggressively acquiring new capabilities in creative areas such as design. One of the key challenges they face in acquiring such firms is managing what can be a significant culture gap between the flexibility of small creative firms and the regimented, industrialized nature of a global IT services firm. Successful acquisitions strik[...]

  Mike Smart presents summary highlights from IBM and The Weather Company at Red Bull Racing.[...]

  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[...]

  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[...]

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[...]

  Mike Smart reports directly from IBM’s European Analyst & Advisory Exchange 2017 with some quick take-aways regarding IBM’s transition from systems integrator to services integrator and its business resiliency services.[...]

  Fast Data is the emerging hot topic of discussion for business leaders seeking to get ahead of the next wave of data utilization. But Fast Data isn't just an evolution of Big Data; it's a market force unto itself that's asking more of traditional and start-up vendors in both traditional DBMS and AI. I spent a (surprisingly snowy) morning this week talking with AI and B[...]

  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[...]

Every day the sheer amount and complexity of cybersecurity information that security analysts are required to sift through increases. Analysts arrive at the start of each day, catch-up on recent attacks and research cybersecurity news, and are thrown into analyzing security incidents: going down the rabbit hole of reviewing data flows, finding outliers, investigating IPs, searching through both 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[...]

  Initiatives around incorporating intelligent technologies to automate and create efficiencies across different HR processes is a top priority for many vendors. To date, RPA has made the most headway, e.g. in payroll for forms management, in benefits for pension calculations, in recruiting for scheduling a candidate’s interview or resume scanning, and in learning for proces[...]

  NelsonHall recently completed an analysis of the digital transformation capabilities and offerings of selected IT services vendors. While all vendors are investing in offerings under the ‘digital transformation’ umbrella, their investments range from industry-focused offerings using proprietary IP, to packaged solutions, to digital strategy consulting. One area of focu[...]

  My colleague, Gary Bragar, recently discussed RPA and AI initiatives in HR, including payroll, recruiting, and learning. Within learning BPS, the majority of RPA investments have been made at a basic level within learning administration, specifically around training scheduling. For example, it previously took ~40 FTEs to manage the entire scheduling process for ~1k classrooms, includ[...]

Robotic process automation and artificial intelligence (RPA & AI) in HR are at an early stage, though the clear signs are that vendors are beginning to make investments that are paying off for their clients. Here I take a look at recent RPA & AI initiatives in three areas of HR: payroll services, recruitment process outsourcing (RPO), and learning services. Payroll RPA [...]