Mavenir ready to prove it is possible to transform mobile network economics

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TBR perspective  

Mavenir’s message is resonating with the market, and its reputation among CSPs is strengthening. In a few short years, the upstart vendor has gone from an M&A amalgamation of disparate businesses to a cohesive, relevant vendor that is now being considered alongside incumbent Tier 1 network vendors for projects at leading CSPs worldwide.

Mavenir is a legitimate contender to supply solutions that will comprise the new webscale-like network architecture CSPs are eager to implement to stay competitive and participate in new value creation in the digital era. The vendor’s greenfield play to provide cloud-native solutions is unique and is a key differentiator from incumbent OEMs that continue to push their relatively expensive, inflexible and closed systems. CSPs are intrigued by Mavenir’s virtualization offerings, not only with the low price points and total cost of ownership (TCO), but also with the performance of their systems in trials and now, with vRAN in some select commercial production environments.

TBR believes Mavenir will become one of the leading telecom network vendors in the digital era and will take measurable share from incumbent vendors during the 5G network build cycle, not only in RAN, but also in the mobile core and digital enablement-related platforms. Though Mavenir is a small fish in a sea of goliaths, the company is able to hold its own by trumpeting its software-first mantra as a means of redefining mobile network economics.

Mavenir’s assessment of where the market needs to go is spot on. CSPs must evolve to become more webscale-like in nature, adopting a network architecture that is dynamic, agile and able to support the demands of the digital era as well as new business models that can be scaled and supported at fundamentally different economics compared to the traditional architecture. More of the same will not work anymore, and CSPs must think and act differently to stay relevant and profitable in the digital era. CSPs are intrigued by the claims Mavenir is making pertaining to radically different mobile network economics and there is desire among CSPs to hear from the vendor about how it can deliver on those promises.

TBR believes Mavenir’s biggest, most impactful play is in the RAN space, which is an approximately $40 billion market and is ripe for significant disruption. RAN is the domain that will be the catalyst to transform Mavenir from a relatively small vendor by revenue (around $500 million this year) into a multibillion-dollar global powerhouse.

Mavenir provided a corporate strategy overview and updates on each of its business units at its third annual analyst day. The vendor is well aligned with underlying trends in the telecom industry, particularly network virtualization and open infrastructure. Mavenir now claims to have product offerings across several network infrastructure domains, including RAN, mobile core, IMS (particularly, VoLTE and RCS), Unified Communications & Collaboration (Mobile Business Fabric), network security and digital enablement platforms, such as for private networks, OSS/BSS and mobile advertising (Aquto). The company’s software-first, hardware-agnostic approach is timely as communication service providers (CSP) accelerate their transformations into digital service providers.

Revving the engine in Stuttgart: Accenture in the heart of the German auto zone

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In July, Accenture announced a new Customer Experience Center in Stuttgart, Germany, focused on working with automobile manufacturers and their partners to accelerate the future of connected cars. With seemingly every IT services vendor and consultancy rolling out initiatives around automobiles, TBR spoke last week with Accenture’s Axel Schmidt, senior managing director and industry managing director, Mobility, about the new center to better understand why Accenture chose Stuttgart, how this center will differ from others, and what will be the core competencies and additional value the company brings to clients by having this new space.

According to Schmidt, customer behavior trends across the automotive industry, including increased specialization, expectations around connectivity, and even the number of times a buyer visits a dealership, have further emphasized the need for automakers to enhance their marketing and sales capabilities, a core consulting strength for Accenture. In combination with its manufacturing and supply chain expertise, the company can help carmakers understand what is possible with emerging technologies and what clients are increasingly demanding. In answer to the question, “Why Stuttgart?” Schmidt explained that an Accenture acquisition, Mackevision, was founded in the city and had strong ties to the automotive sector there. Schmidt anticipates Accenture will expand the center concept to other car hubs, and possibly other related industries such as travel and transportation, based on the company’s engagements with other manufacturers.

When pressed on how Accenture and its automotive clients have responded to the changing market for cars, including an increase in car sharing and the (hoped-for) emergence of self-driving cars, Schmidt noted that Accenture recognizes that “brand strength alone will not ensure future success in mobility.”  As Accenture has advised, clients that “want to gain relevant market shares in the market of mobility services need to act now and reposition their brand by using their sales reach.” In even broader terms, traditional manufacturers, according to Schmidt, “need to embrace new platform- and customer-centric technologies in order to remain successful. Furthermore, car manufacturers need to pivot their business model wisely from building and selling cars to offering mobility.” For some time now, Accenture has advanced the idea of “the new,” to include promising “the customer a seamless mobility experience by offering him in a comfy and affordable manner that kind of mobility he needs.”

Our discussion with Schmidt ended with a look to the future, when automobiles are essentially “software with hardware wrapped around it” and they become the “ultimate mobile device.” (TBR wonders if BMW will update its slogan.) Schmidt said the current 150 million lines of code per advanced automobile will be closer to 1 billion lines of code in an autonomous vehicle. Given everyday experiences with software in other elements of life — and the trend toward “low code” in some IT environments — I think a niche market will grow for no-code, unconnected, software-free cars. Keep that red Barchetta’s motor in working condition.    

Fujitsu, digital trust and the future of technology

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Strike a balance between the utilization of data and the protection of data

Opening the event, Hiroshi Tsuda, head of Security Laboratory at Fujitsu Labs, set the tone by acknowledging that every enterprise and consumer must understand the balance between the utilization and efficiency of data and the associated privacy and protection. Other speakers and panelists at the symposium echoed that theme of balance, each taking a different spin on how balance could be achieved and, most importantly, who bears the responsibility for striking and maintaining balance, as well as remediating any negative consequences caused by mistakes. Tsuda also presented the results of the Fujitsu Global Digital Transformation Survey Report, a survey of 900 business leaders in nine countries that provides insight into their process in digital transformation and to clarify how business leaders around the world perceive trust.

Delivering the Fujitsu Keynote, CEO of Fujitsu Labs Hirotaka Hara explained that the company’s long-standing slogan, “Reliability and Creativity” had been replaced with “Digital Trust and Co-Creation.” For Fujitsu, “digital trust” includes pushing for social acceptance of AI, which requires IT services vendors and technology companies to create “explainable AI” to overcome current reluctance among many companies and individuals to fully accept judgments made by algorithms, rather than humans. In TBR’s view, Fujitsu’s expressed appreciation of the challenges in AI adoption comes as a welcome relief from the hype heard from other IT services and software vendors. Further, the updated slogan reflects a clear evolution from basic reliability of technology and systems to more essential and compelling trust, while the shift from creativity to co-creation moves the conversation from Fujitsu acting alone in R&D to interacting with clients, creating together.

Advancing the trust theme, Hara explained that Fujitsu Laboratories “ensures digital trust through technologies, to include a wide range of solutions, ideas and competencies, such as smart contracts, authentication, compliance, data traceability management and cybersecurity — all with trust at the center.” Multiple IT services vendors and consultancies throughout 2019 have centered events, presentations and use cases around trust, but few have described the ecosystem and diverse elements as comprehensively as Fujitsu. And few have been as direct and succinct as Fujitsu, which stated, “Digital trust is the foundation to achieving digital transformation.”

In TBR’s June 2019 Digital Transformation Insights Report: Voice of the Customer, we quoted the CEO of a global healthcare company on trust and the various roles IT services vendors and their clients must play. Echoing Fujitsu’s sentiments around trust, that CEO said, “Responsibility needs to be an integral part of the overall business and technology landscape for any company, and I strongly suspect that we will see a resurgence of some of the other traditional roles and technology.” In all, Fujitsu, through Hara’s remarks and comments made throughout the day, demonstrated a grounded, hype-free understanding that the challenges of digital transformation do not come from the technologies, but from the ecosystem and the people. And the initial steps to transformation depend on digital trust.

Fujitsu Laboratories Advanced Technology Symposium (FLATS) 2019: Around 400 people gathered in Santa Clara, Calif., for a full day of presentations and panels centered on data security and the need to balance user and regulatory requirements around privacy with expectations around rich online experiences, leading to deep discussions about ethics, transparency and trust. Hosted by Fujitsu Laboratories and attended by more engineers than entrepreneurs, the event surprisingly stayed focused on applying technology for societal good, to build ecosystems of trust, and to protect consumers’ data and privacy. Fujitsu Labs showed off its ground-breaking technological advancements and innovations in an exhibit hall but kept main-stage conversation rooted in the application of technology in a messy and uncertain world.

IBM continues to separate itself from the pack

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Senior Analyst Nicki Catchpole reports this week on IBM’s cloud and software practice, noting: “While IBM’s 3Q19 overall results continued to experience a downward slide, its Cloud & Cognitive Software sector experienced immediate positive effects from the much-anticipated $34 billion acquisition of Red Hat. Red Hat’s OpenShift technology and channel-driven approach have boosted IBM’s cloud growth, expanded the broader IBM portfolio, and opened doors to new customers and markets. Post-merger, IBM is focusing on emphasizing its value proposition at the PaaS layer, with the intent to capture enterprise IT spend in the lucrative hybrid cloud market and position itself as the industry’s only true hybrid multicloud platform. While IBM still faces strong headwinds post-merger, TBR expects that another quarter of executing a cloud-native portfolio approach will position IBM for differentiation and continue to yield positive growth results in this segment.”   

Additional assessments publishing this week from our analyst teams

“Capgemini has sustained a midsingle-digit organic revenue growth trend over the past seven quarters, positively affected by strategic expansion into next-generation and industry-specific solution areas. Capgemini’s revenue growth will decelerate in 4Q19 due to potential softness in the banking sector and in the U.K. Capgemini indicated pockets of softness are developing, specifically in banking due to end-of-year budget management and in the public and private sectors in the U.K. due to uncertainty around Brexit. In September Capgemini’s board of directors chose Chief Operating Officer (COO) Aiman Ezzat to succeed Paul Hermelin as CEO in May 2020. While Ezzat will be responsible for the overall management of the company as CEO, Hermelin will remain chairman of the board. This will ensure a smooth transition in Capgemini’s top executive role. Ezzat has been with Capgemini for 20 years and has deep knowledge of the company from holding leadership roles, such as CFO and, most recently, COO.” — Elitsa Bakalova, Senior Analyst

“Atos’ new CEO, Elie Girard, will continue to steer the company’s strategic direction in the next two years, with a focus on delivering business outcomes for customers utilizing Atos’technology and services expertise in cloud, cybersecurity and emerging areas such as IoT and edge and quantum computing. Revenue and cost synergies from the Syntel acquisition will enable Atos to achieve its financial goals in 2019. Atos is positioned well to support its expansion in North America by cross-selling solutions to existing clients. TBR expects Girard, who has been with Atos since 2014, to emphasize execution of financial targets, especially around improving profitability through productivity and efficiencies.” — Elitsa Bakalova

“With its marriage to United Technologies on the 2020 horizon, Raytheon is on the cusp of a game-changing merger that will impact the federal IT and global aerospace sectors for years to come. In TBR’s 3Q19 Raytheon Intelligence, Information & Services (IIS) report, we will begin to examine the implications of the blockbuster, multibillion-dollar consolidation on Raytheon’s government services business. Despite early disruptions from the looming mega-merger and the loss of the Warfighter FOCUS contract, Raytheon IIS continues to post robust fiscal performance, owing to a steady stream of new classified projects in cyber and space, particularly in its core U.S. market but also overseas with its long-established roster of foreign governments the company counts as clients.” — John Caucis, Senior Analyst

“Leveraging its portfolio network to integrate cloud, digital and security capabilities as well as support delivery of software-driven services will help Cisco Customer Experience maintain growth and profitability. Additionally, Cisco’s increased acquisition activity will provide Cisco Customer Experience with access to a broader client base and enable it to more quickly develop cloud and IoT capabilities to bolster revenue streams in 3Q19.” — Kelly Lesiczka, Analyst

“HCL Technologies’ (HCLT) alliance and acquisition strategy helps the company enhance its portfolio to embed vertical and technical expertise and positions it for profitable revenue growth in 2020. Additionally, HCLT’s investments in talent, including fostering its ‘Employees First’ culture, supports the development of a digitally versed talent bench and will allow HCLT entryways into emerging markets.” — Kelly Lesiczka

“DXC Technology made several changes to its management team, including its CEO, following the retirement announcement of its current chairman, Mike Lawrie. New leadership across DXC will bring a fresh perspective and could help turn around its perpetual restructuring initiatives and financial underperformance. During the quarter, the company appointed Mike Salvino as president and CEO, and TBR believes his vision for the company complements DXC’s strengths and will align with much of his predecessor’s values, minimizing disruption, as Lawrie was involved in the selection process.” — Kevin Collupy, Analyst

“Azure has become a consistently strong revenue driver for Microsoft, but it is also notable that Microsoft has been able to sustain growth of its licensed Server software products by stressing hybrid IT environments and high-value use cases like expansive IoT deployments.” — Meaghan McGrath, Senior Analyst 

“Amazon Web Services’ (AWS) days of unrivaled public cloud PaaS and IaaS dominance may be numbered as key competitors such as Microsoft and Oracle rally together to unseat AWS. AWS is fighting to stem their progress, sacrificing margins to win customer workloads.” — Meaghan McGrath

“Comcast’s Cable Communications business remains in an enviable position in the U.S. telecom industry as it continues to sustain solid revenue growth despite increasing competitive pressures and shifting consumer trends. Central to Comcast’s success is the high subscriber growth spurred by the accelerated speeds of its DOCSIS 3.1 broadband services while being free of the burden of maintaining a legacy network portfolio, which is hindering wireline revenue growth for rivals such as AT&T and Verizon.” — Steve Vachon, Analyst

“The fruits of Verizon’s restructuring initiatives, which focus on eliminating nonessential costs while renewing emphasis on the strength of the company’s wireless business, were evident in Verizon’s improved subscriber growth and consolidated operating margin in 3Q19. Verizon’s emphasis on improving the value proposition of its unlimited data plans led to the company gaining its highest third-quarter wireless phone gross additions in five years, but churn is also rising due to stronger competition from T-Mobile and Xfinity Mobile.” — Steve Vachon

IoT continues to contribute moderately to vendor revenue growth, as vendors embed IoT in their offerings

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IoT is becoming more deeply embedded in vendors’ offerings and messaging

IoT continues its moderate revenue and gross profit growth as vendors and customers become more familiar with what IoT is and how it can be applied. Increasingly, IoT is an expected part of vendors’ offerings, one of a set of tools that can be used to solve business problems and address business opportunities. IoT continues to be viewed more as a technique than a specific market or technology, but increasingly familiar use cases and more mature packaged solutions and components have made it easier to work with.

TBR expects the IoT market to continue to grow, gradually accelerating over at least the next five years. This means IoT will constitute an increasing percentage of vendors’ revenues. Because IoT is just one tool, however, less attention will be paid to its role. It is embedded in messages as well as in products and services, and customers have come to expect its availability.

Customers are increasingly addressing the costs of moving and storing data and are therefore beginning to migrate to a hybrid edge-cloud architecture

IoT has the potential to generate enormous amounts of data, depending on what is being measured, how often, and how precisely. Without data life cycle policy and management, data accumulates without limit and project costs increase over time. An edge-cloud hybrid architecture processes data near the edge and transmits a limited amount of summarizing data to a central data center or cloud service for further analysis and long-term storage. The hardware and software tools for this approach are available but will become much easier to implement going forward.

While IoT revenue and IoT projects are growing, IoT is less prominent in vendors’ marketing communications

IoT is transforming from a product or service line to a capability or a product or service extension. Marketing IoT as a capability or extension allows vendors to scale back marketing and sales costs to a level commensurate with lower-than-first-expected IoT revenues. Successful vendors have repositioned IoT to support their main product or service line and to reinforce, rather than confuse, their main message. This results in a simpler message that is easier for salespeople and customers to understand and evaluate. It has also resulted in more differentiated IoT offerings, because the offerings are specific to each vendor’s overall strategy.

TBR’s Commercial IoT Benchmark is a semiannual publication that highlights current commercial IoT revenue and gross profit for a select list of 28 vendors. The benchmark leverages financial models and projections across a diverse set of IT and operational technology (OT) components. In addition, it outlines the major vendor-based drivers and trends shaping the market. The benchmark examines multiple IoT segments, including business consulting, IT services, ICT infrastructure, software, security, cloud services and connectivity.

Betting on business model transformation through appointment of new leaders

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As companies must manage multidisciplinary and
multigenerational workforces, maintaining properly
trained leaders, with visions closely aligned to the
organization’s DNA rather than investor expectations,
will provide a strong foothold in a largely disrupted IT
services market. The impact on employee culture,
morale, purpose and other organizational behavior
largely depends on the CEO of the company, particularly
if a new one needs to be selected. Promoting from
within typically inspires employees, as is often the case
when a company is performing well, such as with
Accenture; external candidates are often brought in for
fresh, new ideas and are associated with a last resort
measure for companies in distress, similar to Conduent,
DXC Technology (DXC) and Cognizant, to an extent.
While changing a company’s DNA overnight is
impossible, with many examples of leaders who have
tried and failed, embedding new ideas to drive change
must start with a solid foundation. As the decade wraps
up and many ICT vendors place bets on appointing
and/or hiring new CEOs, the question about new ideas
and their execution has yet to be answered. CEOs who
can execute on their initiatives at scale, beyond the
marketing hype and PR, will most likely succeed.

A few recent highlights:

  • In TBR’s view, the CEO changes at Atos and Capgemini will not impact performance. They are both planned, and for Capgemini, the former CEOs will remain part of the board. Both companies will have former CFOs leading, so there will be very strict execution based on numbers. TBR does not expect the stepping down of Atos CEO Thierry Breton on Oct. 31 and the appointment of Elie Girard, current deputy CEO and CFO, to change the company’s strategic direction or to negatively impact Atos’ performance. Atos has been working on a CEO succession plan since the beginning of 2019, when it appointed Girard as deputy CEO. While Girard became CEO on Nov. 1 and will be responsible for the overall management of the company, the chairman of the board position was separated from the CEO’s responsibilities and filled by Bertrand Meunier as nonexecutive chairman of Atos SE’s board of directors. In September Capgemini’s board of directors chose Chief Operating Officer Aiman Ezzat to succeed Paul Hermelin as CEO in May 2020. While Ezzat will become CEO and be responsible for the overall management of the company, Hermelin will remain chairman of the board. This will provide a smooth transition in Capgemini’s top executive role and avert potential execution challenges if a future CEO was to step down completely. Ezzat has been with Capgemini for 20 years and has a deep knowledge of the company from holding leadership roles, such as CFO and, most recently, chief operating officer. TBR expects Ezzat to continue to implement Capgemini’s strategic plans in the coming quarters.
  • Accenture appointed Julie Sweet as CEO effective Sept. 1, 2019. Previously Sweet led Accenture North America operations, where Accenture Technology is a key contributor to revenue performance and the company has successfully executed on its 2017 initiative to recruit 15,000 employees and open 10 innovation hubs across the region by 2020.
  • On April 1, 2019, Brian Humphries took the reins as a CEO of Cognizant, succeeding company co-founder Francisco D’Souza. Shortly after the former Vodafone Business lead stepped in to head Cognizant, the company announced plans to provide voluntary separation to 300 top-level executives in late May. The layoffs, which are part of Cognizant’s efforts to improve its cost structure, have primarily been focused in the U.S. and India.
  • DXC Technology elected former Accenture Operations lead, Mike Salvino, to take over from Mike Lawrie as the company’s CEO. We expect Salvino’s background in operations and DXC’s recent purchase of Luxoft to further expand the company’s opportunities within the BPaaS space.  

Quick Quantum Quips: A call for quantum supremacy sends ripples through the market

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The quantum market changes rapidly, and the hype can often distract from the realities of the technological developments. In our new monthly newsletter, Quick Quantum Quips (Q3), TBR will brief readers on the latest market announcements, stripping that hype to dig deeper into how recent events will impact the market as a whole. To schedule a time to chat with Analyst Stephanie Long or another one of TBR’s quantum analysts about any of the insights below, contact her at [email protected].

October 2019 developments:

  1. Google claimed it achieved quantum supremacy in mid-October, sending ripples through the quantum community. Quantum supremacy is a key milestone many leaders in the quantum computing space have been working toward for years. If true, this milestone would mean that quantum theory has successfully been translated into practical applications, so such a claim has major implications for the industry overall. Google claims its quantum computer was able to perform a truly random number generation in 200 seconds — and that the task would have taken a supercomputer 10,000 years to complete. Further, truly random number generation is necessary for quantum-safe security solutions, making this announcement a multifaceted milestone in the quantum community. Critics of Google’s claim state that it is possible to achieve very similar results in 2.5 days on a supercomputer, although it would require 250 petabytes of storage to do so, potentially diminishing the size of Google’s “milestone” achievement but confirming it as an achievement nonetheless.
  • IBM has been in the news consistently during October for its strong claims against Google’s quantum supremacy claims. TBR believes that the strong opposition signifies the power being the first company to achieve quantum supremacy can hold as well as the damage to the industry an unrealistic claim can cause through false hyping of the technology. The industry already struggles with hype, which pushes C-Suite executives to invest in and expect quick results from a technology that is meant for the long game, and skewed claims only stand to increase the negative impacts of the hype. As such, IBM has made a significant effort to minimize the hype surrounding Google’s announcement to reveal the complete facts surrounding the achievement.
  • IonQ received its latest round of funding in October — to the tune of $55 million. Samsung and a sovereign wealth fund of the United Arab Emirates led the funding this round, while Google, Amazon and New Enterprise Associates re-upped their commitments from earlier funding rounds. The investments in IonQ are significant, as the list includes some potential competitors such as Google. TBR notes that Google is investing in superconducting quantum computing, which presently leads the charge in terms of advancements. However, IonQ’s theory of trapped ion quantum computing is unique in that it does not require cryogenically cold environments to function, making its approach seem more realistic in that it would have broader, more practical commercial applicability. TBR believes Google’s investment in IonQ demonstrates its strong cash position and focus on the applied uses for quantum over being wedded to any particular hardware structure. Google, like many enterprises, is more focused on application exploration rather than the sale of quantum systems.

  • In a true demonstration of the sheer power quantum computing can unleash, customers are jumping on the innovation train to accelerate the development of both the technology and related skills. Airbus announced that it has compiled a list of leading experts to act as judges for its quantum computing competition. The Airbus Quantum Computing Challenge launched earlier this year and is designed to encourage experts and those interested in quantum computing to tackle some of the more complex computational problems for aerospace. All proposals needed to be received by Oct. 31 and are now being reviewed by the team of judges that Airbus compiled. Jury members come from all geographies and from both industrial and academic organizations, including QC Ware, Horizons Quantum Computing, the University of Waterloo, the University of Technology Sydney, QuSoft, the University of California and more. The announcement is significant because a commercial enterprise is recognizing the value quantum can bring to its business and displaying an eagerness to contribute to the advancement of the quantum ecosystem.
  • QC Ware unveiled the list of speakers for its upcoming quantum computing event, Q2B. The event will take place in California in December. Program details can be found at the link provided.

If you would like your company’s announcement featured in an upcoming Q3, contact Geoff Woollacott to coordinate a conversation.

UiPath’s enhanced and expanded technology stack provides a solid foundation to reach scale

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In mid-October Senior Analyst Boz Hristov attended the annual UiPath Forward conference in Las Vegas, and recently, he published his thoughts on the event and UiPath’s role in the robotic process automation market.

He wrote, “UiPath’s position as one of the leading vendors defining the robotic process automation (RPA) market comes with responsibilities for managing expectations across stakeholders, and the company knows it. Enhancing its value proposition by adding the necessary layers of technologies and deploying business-led frameworks internally and with alliance partners helps it build use cases of scale, a necessary attribute to maintain growth momentum, as RPA is no longer a siloed, line-of-business-led initiative, but rather a node in an enterprisewide automation initiative.”

Additional assessments publishing this week from our analyst teams

“TBR’s quarterly full report on IBM highlights the strategic development in the hardware portion of IBM’s larger portfolio. In 3Q19 we discuss IBM’s quantum computing business as well as the positive implications of the September launch of the z15. Additionally, highlights of IBM’s more emerging capabilities such as around blockchain are also expanded on. IBM’s July finalization of its Red Hat buy has sent a wave of open source through the business, impacting Power Systems this quarter.” — Stephanie Long, Analyst

“IBM Services will continue to experience growth in business and technology transformation areas, such as advisory activities around cognitive technology, cloud application modernization and next-generation enterprise applications such as SAP Business Suite 4 HANA (S/4 HANA) and Salesforce. The growth will be driven by IBM Services’ portfolio realignment initiatives to deliver higher-value and higher-margin services that integrate technology and industry expertise and enable clients’ digital reinventions. Synergies with the Red Hat acquisition, which closed on July 9, will continue to generate application modernization deals for IBM Services involving the OpenShift hybrid cloud platform. However, lingering growth challenges in traditional IT service areas and ongoing transformation of the Global Technology Services business will stall IBM Services’ revenue growth and profitability improvement in 2019.” — Elitsa Bakalova, Senior Analyst

“While TBR expects T-Systems’ revenue growth to decelerate slightly in 3Q19, reorganization efforts combined with the company’s investments in cloud, IoT and security capabilities to align its portfolio with client demand will prepare the company to stabilize revenue in 2020.” — Kelly Lesiczka, Analyst

“Sprint’s 3Q19 performance highlights the necessity of the T-Mobile merger and the challenge of Sprint remaining a stand-alone company. Sprint continues to struggle to gain customers without aggressive pricing, while its elevated capex budget is limiting free cash flow and has yet to produce a significant improvement in network quality to lower churn rates.” — Steve Vachon, Analyst

UiPath amplifies the RPA’s value that comes from scale

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UiPath’s position as one of the leading vendors defining the robotic process automation (RPA) market comes with responsibilities for managing expectations across stakeholders, and the company knows it. Enhancing its value proposition by adding the necessary layers of technologies and deploying business-led frameworks internally and with alliance partners helps it build use cases of scale, a necessary attribute to maintain growth momentum, as RPA is no longer a siloed, line-of-business-led initiative, but rather a node in an enterprisewide automation initiative. 

UIPATH’S ENHANCED AND EXPANDED TECHNOLOGY STACK PROVIDES A SOLID FOUNDATION TO REACH SCALE

Solving the productivity paradox has become the guiding light for UiPath’s product development as the company seeks to gain broader stakeholder buy-in. RPA tools continue to be largely selected and utilized by business customers, but the need for democratizing data while addressing larger IT complexities is compelling UiPath to ensure ease of use of its offerings for the broader user community. Targeting new personas beyond RPA developers, including business analysts, citizen developers and testers, expands UiPath’s core platform addressable market but also raises expectations around ROI. By enhancing and adding features including design tools (e.g., Studio, Studio X, Studio T), management tools (e.g., Orchestrator, Cloud Platform, AI Fabric), apps (e.g., Forms, Tasks, Chatbots) and insights (e.g., RPA, Business Analytics), UiPath’s end-to-end automation suite captures the entire cycle of plan, build, manage, run, engage and measure.

While the build, manage and run stages are somewhat legacy capabilities, expanding into the plan cycle, which was accelerated through the acquisition of Netherlands-headquartered ProcessGold and enabled through the launch of UiExplorer, helps UiPath act as an arbitrator of the dilemma “Should a company automate a bad process or fix the process first?” by applying a scientific plan for implementing RPA one process at a time. TBR also sees the purchase of ProcessGold as an attempt for UiPath to increase its value proposition for higher-value design thinking workshops. While we do not expect UiPath to be a threat to its consulting partners’ core expertise, wrapping advisory frameworks with AI-enabled process mining tools could address the dilemma sooner. The engage and measure pillars of the UiPath Platform suite provide the connective tissue between the deeper collaboration between humans and robots as well as pave the way for the company’s pragmatic AI vision of building intelligent systems that provide the proper tools and skills. How to measure and report the true business impact of RPA implementation, however, remains up for debate, as enterprise buyers approach automation differently. As UiPath strives to reach scale, the inevitable question of “What’s next?” is rather loaded considering the hype around AI, the possibilities of automation and the future of RPA. During the conference UiPath released the AI Fabric solution in private mode, first announced in April, to address the barriers of AI and RPA working together including in operations, technology and processes. As the notion of AI fabric is breaking down siloes between RPA and data science teams through features such as intuitive interface, operationalizing AI models and closing the RPA-AI data feedback loop, AI Fabric is a timely response to buyers’ adoption of AI, which for many is still in a pilot phase.

For the second year in a row TBR attended the annual UiPath Forward conference, the focus of which has shifted dramatically from regionally oriented in 2018 to global in 2019, reflecting the company’s efforts to build a framework and portfolio offerings developed and delivered through integrated scale. And stories of scale were not lacking: The conference hosted close to 3,000 attendees this year — twice as many as last year — and demonstrated expanded capabilities of the core UiPath Platform. UiPath also announced two acquisitions and shared four dozen client stories onstage. Under the slogan “Reboot Work,” the conference amplified the broader need for rebooting customer experience and business overall, which in many cases is easier said than done, but client stories shared during the conference showed pain points are lessening, reflecting on UiPath’s Automation First vision with “automation is the application” framework at its core.

Microsoft beats out Amazon after contentious competition for DOD’s JEDI award

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Last Friday’s announcement of the massive U.S. federal government cloud contract led Senior Analyst John Caucis to publish a special report explaining how Microsoft won, why Amazon lost, and what it all means for the IT services vendors in the U.S. public sector space. “Regardless of why the DOD [Department of Defense] chose to announce the winner of the biggest single cloud contract to date in federal IT (and one of the biggest IT contracts in federal IT history) when it did, Microsoft is now poised to capture potentially billions in revenue as the DOD’s leading cloud vendor on JEDI [Joint Enterprise Defense Infrastructure], an award with a $10 billion ceiling and a potential 10-year life span if all options are exercised. Vendor selection for JEDI has been ongoing for over a year, plagued by multiple protests, internal investigations, and conflict-of-interest allegations by and between the initial four contestants, Amazon, IBM, Microsoft and Oracle. The acrimony kept the DOD from awarding JEDI by its original target date of April 2019, though the agency eliminated IBM and Oracle in April in the first ‘down-select’ of the vendor review process.”

Additional assessments publishing this week from our analyst teams

“Restructuring and automation efforts help Fujitsu reposition for profitable growth in its services business. However, the company may need to look outside its traditional client base to see tangible results throughout 2020.” — Kelly Lesiczka, Analyst

“From a cloud perspective, Fujitsu will align its strategy to its competitors’ strategies, which consist of encouraging customer migrations to hybrid and multicloud environments. However, TBR believes Fujitsu’s expertise in IT outsourcing will serve as a differentiator as Fujitsu looks to explore operational services within multicloud environments more heavily compared to industry peers. Fujitsu announced plans to invest ¥500 billion in its DX business over the next five years and to launch an independently operated consulting business, expected in January 2020, to meet its technology goals.” — Nicki Catchpole, Senior Analyst

“While Cognizant faced challenges within its mature industry segments in 2Q19, we expect the company improved its ability to scale digital solutions through additional acquisitions, such as Zenith Technologies, to offset pressure in 3Q19.” — Lesiczka

“Tata Consultancy Services’ (TCS) Business 4.0 strategy focuses on expanding the company’s solution suite around next-generation offerings such as AI, analytics, big data, blockchain, cloud, IoT and security. Integrating this strategy across service delivery and got-to-market teams enables TCS to sustain its global brand awareness and creates opportunities to upsell existing clients and attract new logos seeking increasingly comprehensive digital transformations, which generates opportunities for longer-term and often larger-dollar outsourcing engagements.” — Kevin Collupy, Analyst

“TBR’s Global Delivery Benchmark shows that agile-based service delivery is speeding up vendors’ ability to deliver at scale, which is forcing vendors to hire more talent with specific skills to keep pace in this delivery model. As vendors continue to adjust business models to operate in an automation-enabled services environment, their inability to systematically and consistently monetize IP will further pressure profits.” — Boz Hristov, Senior Analyst

“In the latest Digital Transformation Insights report on Digital Marketing Services, TBR notes that as the most mature digital transformation process, customer experience process has compelled buyers to embark on omnichannel projects to unify insights and processes across the customer life cycle and deliver more personalized experiences to end consumers. While macroeconomic headwinds will taper revenue growth, AI-enabled user experience solutions will continue to create entry points for customer acquisitions compelling vendors to recalibrate investment strategies.” — Hristov

“Leidos’ 3Q19 revenue is expected to rise between 4% and 6% year-to-year to between $2.68 billion and $2.73 billion as the company’s backlog continues to reach new highs, owing to a strong, sustained pace of net-new contract bookings across defense, civilian and particularly, healthcare areas. Leidos also successfully defended its position on a handful of large projects during 3Q19, including the $2.9 billion, 10-year NASA End-User Services & Technologies (NEST) program and the $927 million IT and logistics support contract with the Transportation Security Agency (TSA).” — Caucis

“CACI’s revenue is projected to increase between 15% and 20% year-to-year to between $1.34 billion and $1.4 billion in 3Q19. A revenue result for CACI anywhere in the projected range would represent another record level for the company, reflecting the tight alignment of its differentiated solutions with high-priority spending areas in the defense and intelligence markets. CACI is beating out incumbents on large-scale program recompetes and effectively defending its incumbency on its own legacy engagements, while the strength of its fiscal performance points to a high-value solutions mix highly relevant to its core customer set. $1 billion in acquisitions made in 1Q19 are also bolstering CACI’s top-line, though concurrently generating margin pressures.” — Caucis

“Booz Allen Hamilton’s (BAH) revenue is expected to increase between 9% and 11% year-to-year to between $1.76 billion and $1.79 billion in 3Q19, consistent with the company’s plan to aggressively execute on its FY2020 growth objectives during the first half of the fiscal year (calendar 2Q19 and 3Q19).  BAH is realizing balanced growth across its government-focused business lines, while growth in its Global Commercial business has been more variable. Irrespective, BAH continues to book a strong volume of IT modernization, advisory and security-focused engagements.” — Caucis

“To further reduce churn and increase revenue, T-Mobile is building a more robust customer ecosystem by launching new value-added services, expanding its IoT portfolio, and entering new markets such as video and residential broadband.” — Steve Vachon, Analyst

“AT&T’s network investments in areas including 5G, NFV, SDN and IoT are providing the foundation for businesses to support digital transformation initiatives to enhance efficiency and customer experience. AT&T is preparing to support next-generation digital solutions by fostering network innovations at its six global AT&T Foundry centers as well as working with multiple leading technology providers including Dell Technologies, IBM, Microsoft, Samsung and Hewlett Packard Enterprise.” — Vachon