NelsonHall recently talked with Eviden, Atos’ consulting and application services business, about its QE practice, Digital Assurance. Digital Assurance has 5k quality engineers, 65% offshore, reflecting a high leverage in North America (due to its Syntel heritage) counterbalanced by Atos’ large European public sector client base. The practice has aligned its service po[...]

  During the summer of 2023, we met with Mohammed Sijelmassi, Sopra Steria’s CTO and Digital Transformation Office head and discussed how Sopra Steria was deploying internally and helping clients externally with GenAI and LLMs. Earlier this month, we met with Mr. Sijelmassi again to assess Sopra Steria’s progress on its transformation, its work with clients, and use cases. [...]

  2023 was a year of disruption after the 2021-22 digital catch-up. As the year unfolded, IT services spending slowed down, initially in the U.S. in the financial services, telecom, and high-tech sectors. We expect 2024 to be a year of transition with a modest rebound in IT services spending, continued consulting interest in GenAI, a rebound in cloud infrastructure adoption after a [...]

While more efficient management of IT KPIs and incidents remains highly important, and Capgemini’s Enterprise Automation Fabric addresses these challenges, it now goes further and enables organizations to relate the impact of missed IT KPIs and incidents to individual business KPIs. Not all IT KPIs are created equal, so Enterprise Automation Fabric incorporates a 3-level CMDB linking busi[...]

  The CEO of Atos’ Tech Foundations business recently updated industry analysts on its transformation program. We have commented about the turbulent period Atos Group is going through in splitting into two businesses (Tech Foundations and Eviden). The planned sale of Tech Foundations to Czech billionaire Daniel Kretinsky’s EP Equity Investment (EPEI) vehicle is going ahe[...]

  NelsonHall recently wrote a PoV on the current disconnect between GDP growth and IT services spending[1]. In October 2023, the IMF refreshed its GDP growth predictions; these include better 2023 GDP growth in the U.S. (+2.1%) and Japan (+20%) than the U.K. (+0.5%) and the Eurozone (+0.7%). Unusually, the IMF's predictions are not in line with our observations of IT services spend[...]

  NelsonHall recently visited the TCS Pace Port innovation center in Amsterdam, the first Pace Port opened by TCS in Europe in May 2021 following a delay caused by the pandemic.  TCS is not unique in having opened facilities designed to foster collaboration and innovation to address clients' business challenges and new requirements. In itself, the broad concept of the Pace [...]

  NelsonHall recently attended Compucom’s Analyst and Advisor Event 2023 in Charlotte, NC. It provided an opportunity to meet the executive leadership team, which has evolved over the last 12 months. Kevin Shank was appointed CEO in December 2022, having served as a senior executive at Compucom for nine years. He was joined earlier this year by Matt Olson as COO, also a previous [...]

  Sopra Steria is the latest vendor to announce a significant investment in GenAI/LLMs and its incorporation into its software engineering platform (Ingine). We recently met with Mohammed Sijelmassi, who holds two roles at Sopra Steria: CTO and Digital Transformation Office. We discussed how Sopra Steria is deploying internally and helping clients externally with GenAI and LLMs. [...]

  Cognizant's non-U.S. business, Cognizant Global Growth Markets (GGM), recently held an analyst and advisor day and discussed its regional priorities. New CEO Ravi Kumar has initiated a restructuring plan ('NextGen Program') to reduce Cognizant's cost base to fund investments. While Cognizant had guided on flat topline growth in 2023, Q1 saw a 9% y/y growth in LT[...]

  We recently talked with TCS’ Salesforce practice about its verticalization initiatives. Product verticalization has been one of Salesforce’s key strategies (along with Customer 360/cross-selling and geographic expansion) since 2014, when it launched its Industries business unit. Like SAP, Salesforce acknowledges that organizations spend time and effort customizing thei[...]

  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[...]

  Atos recently held its Capital Market Day for Tech Foundations. It is a year since the company announced its intention to spin off its high-growth units into a new company, Eviden, and keep its historic IT infrastructure services (and U.K. BPO capabilities) in an entity called Tech Foundations. Alongside the spin-off, Atos initiated a massive €1.1bn restructuring plan for Tech F[...]

  NelsonHall recently attended Unisys’ Analyst and Advisor Event 2023 in New York. The tagline for the event was ‘Imagination to Realization’ and reflective of the new Unisys branding. Mike Thomson, President, and COO, started the event with Unisys’ new NetZero Goal by 2030 and its vision to provide a single pane of glass for clients to manage their ESG and s[...]

  The IT services industry has entered a new growth cycle, with increased emphasis on portfolio management and vendors increasingly divesting their low-growth, low-margin businesses. IBM was an early example of this trend with its Kyndryl spin-off. Several of its competitors are also following this pattern, including Atos. At the same time, in the Nordics, Tietoevry will go one step[...]

  NelsonHall recently completed an in-depth analysis of cognitive & self-healing IT infrastructure management services, researching the capabilities of leading IT services vendors and the requirements of their clients. This blog looks at the investments vendors need to make to meet client demand, and how the market will evolve over the next 12 to 18 months. While there is an inc[...]

  A New Focused Division  BT has announced the merger of its two ICT services units, Global and Enterprise, into a new division, BT Business. The new division will have pro-forma revenues of £8.5bn and an EBITDA of £2bn. The current CEO of Global will lead BT Business. With this move, BT wants to unify its B2B market and focus its capabilities on connectivity, u[...]

  We recently talked to Tata Elxsi, the engineering and R&D services vendor headquartered in Bangalore, India. We discussed where the adoption of AR/VR is currently among enterprises, how the metaverse differs from AR/VR, and which B2B use cases enterprises will prefer in the short to medium term. The current demand for virtual reality (VR) is primarily driven by the gaming indu[...]

  We recently talked to Cognizant about its Salesforce Marketing Cloud capabilities. Within the Salesforce portfolio, Marketing Cloud, along with Commerce Cloud, is a high-potential product that will eventually outgrow the more mature Sales and Service Clouds. More than any other Salesforce product, Marketing Cloud has grown through M&A, notably ExactTarget (that came with B2B m[...]

  We recently attended Infosys’ EMEA CONFLUENCE flagship client event and found the company quietly bullish about recent and projected performance in the region. Europe remains a growth market for Infosys Salil Parekh made it clear some years ago that he wanted to grow Infosys’ business in Europe, and the results are there to see. Europe now accounts for [...]