Key Findings & Highlights:

Founded in 1996 in Chennai, CSS Corp is a privately-held organization headquartered in Milpitas, CA. It provides a number of services including remote infrastructure management, technology support, and cloud enablement.

In June 2013, The Partners Group acquired a controlling stake in CSS Corp, for $270m.

In August 2016, CSS Corp named Manish Tandon as its new CEO. Tandon had come from Infosys. Upon joining Tandon sought to expand CSS Corp's services beyond customer service support and infrastructure management to include a full suite of IT services. This shift included investment in growing innovation capabilities, including the opening of innovation labs.

This expanded focus on IT services aligned with many companies looking to pivot to new application development approaches, modernizing application landscapes and delivery and to outcome-based pricing models, so this is where CSS Corp has focused its growth efforts, rather than on more traditional run the business, maintenance engagements. It is focusing on building capabilities in digital engineering, primarily in investments in four key areas through its innovation lab network:

• AI/ML
• RPA
• UX/mobility
• DevOps and agile.

While it is privately held and does not regularly report financial results, based on public statements by the CEO, NelsonHall estimates that CSS Corp achieved revenues of ~$160m in CY 2018. Of this, it estimates that CSS Corp had ~$16m in agile development and DevOps services revenues in 2018. NelsonHall estimates that agile development and DevOps will rise to ~$20m in CY 2019.

CSS Corp is building its digital engineering capabilities to deliver both agile development and DevOps services. It is looking to support clients across three different types of agile and DevOps initiatives: the first use these capabilities to deliver services to the client, the second type of initiative is aimed at helping clients adopt these services internally and the third type of initiative spans both delivering the services and transforming the client.

CSS Corp has a total of ~6k employees. Of this, ~3k are located at delivery centers in Chennai and Bangalore, India. The other ~3k are located in the Philippines, Costa Rica, China, U.S., U.K., and Poland.

CSS Corp maintains an overall delivery center network with centers in the following countries: the U.S., U.K., India, China, Costa Rica, Singapore, Poland, Philippines, and Mauritius.

Remote agile development and DevOps services are delivered from India delivery centers located in Chennai and Bangalore, India and Dalian, China.

While it has incorporated agile and DevOps for several years, it wasn't until 2016 that CSS Corp built a dedicated agile and DevOps practice, more recent than many competitors. However, without a large legacy application management footprint to address, CSS Corp has been able to focus its efforts on developing modern offerings and building, rather than re-skilling, modern skillsets.

CSS Corp has a corporate focus on a sub-set of industries. CSS Corp's strong relationship and experience with retail and CPG provide it strong industry knowledge and tailored offerings in industries that are not the largest focus areas for many of CSS Corp's competitors. While this is a strength, it can also act as a risk, due to the heavy concentration of clients in limited geographies and industries.

This focus on innovative offerings has led it to develop broad DevOps offerings while retaining a technology agnostic and flexible approach to adapt to each specific client situation.

While CSS Corp takes a holistic approach to help clients transform their own internal operations, including organizational, process, and culture changes, a key challenge is only ~7% of its dedicated agile and DevOps workforce are located in close proximity to its clients. It will need to continue to grow this workforce to support the growing demand for broad transformation initiatives.