Vendor Analysis
published on May 25, 2018
Report Overview:
This NelsonHall vendor assessment analyzes Atos' offerings and capabilities in IoT Services.
Who is this Report for:
NelsonHall’s IoT Services Vendor Assessment for Atos is a comprehensive assessment of Atos’ IoT service offerings and capabilities designed for:
- Sourcing managers monitoring the capabilities of existing suppliers of IT services and identifying vendor suitability for IoT services
- Vendor marketing, sales and business managers looking to benchmark themselves against their peers
- Financial analysts and investors specializing in the IoT sector.
Scope of this Report:
The report provides a comprehensive and objective analysis of Atos’ IoT service offerings, capabilities, and market and financial strength, including:
- Analysis of the company’s offerings and key service components, accelerators, and “platforms”
- 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
- Analysis of the company’s strengths, weaknesses and outlook.
Key Findings & Highlights:
Atos' background in IoT comes from its payment terminals (through its Worldline subsidiary), from capabilities around supervision, command and control systems of power plants (through its Worldgrid unit) and from the former Siemens IT Solutions and Services (which had embedded systems capabilities, and developed the Siemens Remote Service product).
In 2010, Atos launched its IoT offering, initially with Worldline providing an IoT software-based service. Two flagship contracts were the French contract to manage speed cameras (until 2016) and the Renault R Link connected car system.
In parallel to this, Atos' B&PS provided consulting and systems integration services around IoT services. B&PS expanded its Worldgrid business towards decentralized energy distribution, smart grids and utilities, relying on its engineering service capabilities (~800 personnel) to provide mechanical engineering, and embedded systems services, and on its manufacturing, retail, and transport (MRT) ERP/SAP-PLM-MES expertise.
In mid-2015, Atos set up a center of expertise across all of its GBUs/geographies, expanding from B&PS and Worldline to IDM and BDS. Today, IoT is a service offering, drawing on personnel from the different divisions, of which Worldline remains the most active.
Worldline brings a client base in the retail and payment industry, with strengths in connected cars, fleet management, and connected home. It offers a pay-per-use pricing model, whether hosted by Worldline, AWS, or by Microsoft Azure.
Atos has its own IoT platforms around communications, connected vehicles, and connected home, and e.
B&PS is open to other IoT platforms (e.g., Siemens MindSphere, SAP Leonardo, and Microsoft Azure IoT Suite) and has a more traditional project-based pricing model. Its areas of strength are in smart city, industry 4.0, CPG, utilities, and media. An important element of B&PS strategy is around Siemens MindSphere, where Atos been active in creating '"applications"/industry use cases on top of MindSphere.
An important element of Atos' IoT strategy is to create vertical applications, and to integrate them with other applications, including business applications, PLM, MES, and digital twins. An example of such vertical applications is the work that Atos did for an industrial printer manufacturer, whose printing labels are used for eggs and bottles. The client wanted to improve the availability of its printers, and also monitor on a real-time basis the status of consumables such as ink. Services provided by Atos included data analytics, e.g., data correlation and data visualization as part of an initial PoC. Atos highlight it is a partner with the Technical University of Vienna (TU Wien) on industry 4.0 to showcase its integration capabilities.
Another key initiative in Atos' IoT service portfolio includes creating usability across IoT platforms, and create modules.
Atos is further investing in MindSphere and Microsoft Azure. It is also working on simplifying its service portfolio, and expanding its discussion with clients from technology to a business discussion.
Atos is relying on Atos Codex' big data and analytics, with "Atos Managed OpenShift" and "Atos Cloud Foundry" in its adoption of a micro-service architecture, and for acting as a single supplier of run and build services (i.e., development, patches, and enhancements).