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[...]

NelsonHall attended the IBM Forum for Financial Services event in New York this past week, which focused on how bank customers are using IBM’s cognitive offerings. IBM has been investing heavily in services and technologies to enable deeper insight into financial institutions’ customers, starting 18 months ago with the development of Watson-based analytic assets. IBM’s the[...]

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[...]

  Employer branding has become an integral component of an effective talent strategy. It is synonymous with a company’s reputation as an employer, portraying the image of what the company is like to work for. The purpose of properly conveying and clearly communicating an employer’s brand is essential to attract, engage, develop, and retain the best talent for an organizatio[...]

  Smart Cities is one of the fastest growing segments within the burgeoning internet of things (IoT) outsourcing market. Currently worth just ~$140m, NelsonHall forecasts the global market for Smart Cities IoT outsourcing to grow by 75% CAGR over the next five years, taking it to ~$2.15bn by 2020. IoT is being applied in commercial buildings and homes, and in urban infrastructures s[...]

NelsonHall recently attended a cloud computing event hosted by IBM, its first such event in Europe since it introduced a new segment structure at its investor briefing in February. With this new structure in place, plus the recent addition of revenue disclosures for cloud from each segment, we were interested in the extent to which IBM is combining its relevant cloud capab[...]

In December 2015, we published two blogs about M&A activity in the IT services industry in 2015 (here are the links for Part 1 and Part 2). This blog examines M&A activity in IT services in Q1 2016 and sets our expectations for the rest of this year. In short, 2016 started off with a bang, with two very large IT services acquisitions announced in the first [...]

IBM Quality Assurance and Testing Services (QA&TS) practice recently briefed NelsonHall on its approach to managing test cases and on reducing the numbers of test case automation, beyond pair-wise testing. Before we jump into the details of IBM QA&TS’ offering, let’s step back for a few moments: software testing remains a very human labor-intensive activity. If we take a man[...]

Reflecting slightly improved macro-economic conditions, 2015 was an active year for M&A activity in the IT services industry. The largest acquisition - for some years - was that of IGATE by Capgemini. And there was a large number of small to mid-sized transactions. When analyzing this active M&A activity, several findings are striking: In spite of all the intensive discu[...]

The global learning BPO (LBPO) market was worth $2.9bn in 2014 and NelsonHall forecasts it to grow at 6.7% per annum, reaching $4bn by 2019. But what is the current pattern and nature of LBPO deals, and how are things changing? Recent LBPO activity has been largely from Europe, a trend which began to pick up in 2014. Activity is widespread across Europe, including the U.K., Germany, Nordics, De[...]

IT security has never been more important, with levels of cybercrime continuing to climb and the adoption of cloud, mobile and IoT technologies increasing organizations’ ‘attack surface area’.  With organizations gathering more data than ever via digitization and big data, and attackers finding ever more sophisticated ways of targeting them, both the depth and breadth of att[...]

Though we’re only just into fall, the nature of activity in the Benefits Administration market in 2015 provides important pointers to key strategic focus areas in 2016. In the U.S., the emphasis will continue around Health & Welfare (H&W) services, stemming from the Affordable Care Act (ACA). In 2015, tier two H&W specialists such as Businessolver and TASC launched ACA reporti[...]

In early May, IBM and SAP announced a partnership to provide enhanced HR software and services to each other’s clients.  On June 5, IBM Kenexa and SAP SuccessFactors execs held a call to further explain the rationale for the partnership and its expected benefits. This includes integration and access to each other’s HCM software, allowing clients to select the offering that best me[...]

Since my September 2014 blog, Wellness Outsourcing on the Rise, there have been some key developments in employee wellness programs, along with new Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) guidance that enables employers to offer incentives to wellness participants of up to 30% of their insurance premium. With employees keenly aware of the annual rise in their out-of-pocket health insuran[...]

HP recently announced a major (multi-billon) 10-year IT infrastructure management services contract with Deutsche Bank’s wholesale banking division (which accounts for around 50% of the DB Group revenues). HP Enterprise Services (HP ES) will deploy HP Helion, providing data center services on-demand including storage, platform and hosting – activities formerly essentially done in-ho[...]

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,[...]

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[...]

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[...]

The latest large partnership and implementation of Workday was announced August 13, 2014 by CSC who will establish a consulting practice enabling clients to transition to Workday, and also deploy Workday internally to ~70k employees globally. The move to launch Workday consulting and implementation practices, often alongside HR BPO capability, has already achieved considerable momentum. Similar[...]