Vendor Analysis
published on Jul 04, 2014
Report Overview:
Syntel is a Troy, Michigan headquartered vendor of Indian IT and KPO services. It was founded in 1980 and floated on the U.S. NASDAQ in 1997. The company has a market cap of ~$3.5bn. Syntel had 2013 revenues of $824m and an income from operations margin of 32.4%. Q1 2014 revenues were $220m, up 16%.
Who is this Report for:
NelsonHall's Software Testing Vendor Assessment for Syntel is a comprehensive assessment of Syntel's software testing offerings and capabilities, designed for:
- Sourcing managers monitoring the capabilities of existing suppliers of IT services and identifying vendor suitability for software testing services
- Vendor marketing, sales and business managers looking to benchmark themselves against their peers
- Financial analysts and investors specializing in the software testing sector.
Scope of this Report:
The report provides a comprehensive and objective analysis of Syntel's software testing offerings, capabilities, and market and financial strength, including:
- Analysis of the company's offerings and key service components
- Revenue estimates
- Identification of the company's strategy, emphasis and new developments
- Analysis of the profile of the company's customer base including the company's targeting strategy and examples of current contracts
- Analysis of the company's strengths, weaknesses and outlook.
Key Findings & Highlights:
Syntel's testing practice was created in 2004 and reached a headcount of 3.5k in 2012; by Q1 2014 it was representing ~14% of Syntel's overall headcount. It is a horizontal line within Syntel, providing full-time testing personnel for client engagements.
Syntel has structured its testing service offering around two main principles:
- It is rather far-reaching in scope, expanding from core manual testing to specialized services, e.g. software, ERP testing, and model-based testing
- Each service offering, especially in specialized testing services, is to be underpinned by an IP or accelerator. IP creation is a key priority for the company, as it is meant to drive automation and to be a differentiator to the competition.
Syntel has divided its testing service offering into two main categories:
- Traditional testing activities, ranging from functional testing (manual testing and test automation) to non-functional (performance testing and security testing) and QA services (including test process improvement). These services account for ~75% of Syntel's testing revenues
- Specialized offerings including ERP testing, mobile application testing, BI and data warehousing, and test support activities. These services represent 25% of Syntel's testing revenues.
Consistent with Syntel's overall strategy, the testing practice is developing its own IP around each offering.
Syntel's main IP is iTAP, which is a superseding tool that incorporates a number of Syntel accelerators, ranging from model-based testing to test case repositories. Syntel also has a number of standalone tools including mobile application testing and browser compatibility testing.
One of Syntel's major actions in 2013 was to finalize the restructuring of its IPs into standalone accelerators; as a result, most of its clients do not use iTAP (see below) as a whole, but specific components or features.