Pandemic-related cloud adoption continues, with more multiproduct, mission-critical SaaS implementations planned for 2021

The outbreak of COVID-19 led to constraints around enterprise IT budgets, but the emergence of a digital workforce resulted in accelerated adoption of cloud applications, particularly those related to productivity and customer-facing suites in the front office. Enterprises needed to rapidly shift operations to the cloud to support remote workforces, increasing the value of service arms and IT services partners to mitigate client risk in the form of cloud road-mapping, migration and implementation services.

In the long term, internal service capabilities and IT services partners will become critical to enabling enterprises’ digital transformations, particularly as front-office cloud deployments mature and as clients explore migrating more customized environments like ERP to cloud or pursue industry-based solution deployments in highly regulated industries like healthcare and the public sector.

The bulk of enterprises are employing a best-of-breed approach to the development of their cloud IT architectures, evidenced by 42% of respondents stating that they currently use three or more SaaS vendors. As a result, application vendors have been driving alliance activity with infrastructure providers to give clients more flexibility around how they consume cloud, evidenced by SAP’s decision to offer SAP Business Suite 4 HANA with leading infrastructure players like Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services. While best-of-breed IT will remain prevalent, cloud players have increasingly driven investments to tighten the integrations of complementary suites to expand share of client wallet by enabling multiproduct deals, a tactic that has been effectively employed by Salesforce and Microsoft in 2020.

Cloud players aim to accelerate the proliferation of their IP by employing industry-based go-to-market capabilities to provide clients with prebuilt data models that alleviate concerns around data compliance and governance. This tactic aligns with clients’ needs, as 51% of respondents who deployed industry solutions cited compliance and regulatory standards as a key benefit. To strengthen the value of industry clouds to clients, vendors are offering prebuilt integrations with leading data providers, such as Microsoft’s integrations with electronic health record providers through Cloud for Healthcare. These types of integrations will be critical to accelerating client time to value, while ensuring the integrity of data by meeting industry-specific regulations.

TBR’s Cloud Applications Customer Research tracks how customers are modernizing application environments and choosing between different cloud delivery methods. Leveraging in-depth conversations between TBR and enterprise customers, the Cloud Infrastructure & Platforms Customer Research provides subscribers with actionable insight that they can use to better understand their customers’ behavior and win cloud infrastructure deals. Topics covered for both reports include public, private and hybrid delivery options; decision-making involvement and criteria; leading vendor perception; field positioning and competition guides; and the impact of emerging trends (e.g., containers, security, platforms).

On Jan. 13 news broke that Intel CEO Bob Swan will retire and be replaced by Intel alum and current VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger, effective Feb. 15. Although Intel is facing challenges and has suffered setbacks in the last few years, it would be an exaggeration to say the company is in trouble. It dominates PC and server CPUs market share and extracts much greater profits from those devices than do their manufacturers.

Despite share gains by AMD, Intel’s hegemony over the x86 instruction set and its related silicon will assure continued profits for many years, as any transition in such critical components is slow and careful. Swan came to the corner office when Intel was struggling with issues that have persisted, and, in some cases, intensified. Some of these challenges have been self-inflicted from an inside-out perspective, while others have been outside-in threats that internal deficiencies have compounded. Notwithstanding, a growing number of activist investors have been pressuring Intel’s board for leadership change.

The inside-out challenge is to marry manufacturing scale and agility

Intel has enforced the rule of Moore’s Law on the industry for years. Faster, better, cheaper form factors have almost single handedly underpinned the digitization of business and the consumerization of IT throughout much of our daily lives. The inexorable march has seen the rapid rise and fall of business entities as proprietary minicomputer architectures gave way to the Microsoft Windows/Intel CPU, or Wintel, juggernaut that enjoyed a near virtual lock on the market. Intel built its share dominance on two core best practices: chip design and manufacturing.

Each new generation of CPUs requires both a thorough redesign and a massive technically challenging improvement in the chip manufacturing process. For decades, Intel has relied not only on its technical skills but also on its massive revenue to stay ahead of competitors. Other chip vendors rely on third-party chip factories, called foundries. Over the past three years, the main independent foundry, Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company (TMSC), has outperformed Intel, as has Samsung. The technology race in chip manufacturing is closely related to the thinness of the substrate. Intel has not yet produced its promised 7nm chip, and its current road map states it will not produce 5nm chips until 2023; whereas TMSC and Samsung produced 5nm chips in sample quantities in 2019.

Because of the delay in manufacturing technology, Intel has not been able to meet demand, resulting in PC vendor backlogs. These backlogs have been beneficial for PC vendors, reducing price competition and increasing margins. Intel margins are down, but not severely. The constrained supply made it easier for Intel’s main competitor in PC CPUs, AMD, to gain market share, but because of buyer conservatism and the long lead time necessary to design new PCs, the erosion has been small.

On the server side, Intel has to embrace a more agile manufacturing philosophy and a willingness to essentially become a contract manufacturer of third-party designs as the consolidated Wintel form factor gives way to multiple designs in what is commonly called accelerated computing. At the same time, market uniformity and scale are also giving way. Powerful, small, low-cost form factors are going to proliferate as digitization continues. Edge compute and various smart things will contribute to this shift, and the ability to run smaller manufacturing runs will become paramount.

Revamping Intel’s development process and pivoting to more agile manufacturing will be two core internal challenges confronting Gelsinger, but not the only ones. The outside-in pressures will mount as well.

France-based IT services giant Atos confirmed on Jan. 7 rumors regarding a “friendly transaction” with DXC Technology (NYSE: DXC), which could result in the second-largest global IT services vendor, closer to the size of Accenture (NYSE: ACN) ($45 billion revenue in 2020) and larger than Tata Consultancy Services ($22 billion revenue estimated in 2020) and IBM Services (NYSE: IBM) after the Global Technology Services spin-off at the end of 2021 ($23 billion annual revenue after the spin-off).

What is in it for Atos? Scale, and more scale

Atos has not been shy about making larger-scale acquisitions over the last decade, acquiring Siemens IT Solutions and Services, and its roughly 26,300 employees, in 2011; Xerox’s ITO business, with 9,600 employees, in 2015; and Syntel, and its 23,500 employees, in 2018, proving its capabilities at absorbing companies of different sizes. With DXC Technology, Atos would gain scale in the U.S., something the company has been pursuing in fits and starts over the last five years, often through acquisitions as well as changes in leadership in North America.

From a portfolio diversification perspective, though, acquiring DXC Technology is not the best choice, in TBR’s opinion, as Atos’ scale would increase in managed infrastructure services, an area in which it is already well-established. However, Atos would gain DXC Technology’s security services and solutions capabilities and add approximately 3,000 people to its more than 5,000 security professionals. Additionally, Atos would gain scale in digital security, an area of strategic expansion as Atos aims to increase its revenues in this segment from €0.7 billion (or $0.9 billion) in 2019 to €2.1 billion (or $2.6 billion) over the midterm.

Despite the recent challenging market environment, Atos has been on an acquisition spree, using its remaining free cash flow after dividend payments to make bolt-on transactions. Since the beginning of 2020, Atos has announced nine acquisitions in four expansion segments: cloud, digital, security and decarbonization. With DXC Technology, Atos’ global service delivery capabilities would also expand and the company would reach a combined low-cost resource leverage of approximately 53%, compared to 46% for Atos alone.

DXC Technology gains opportunity for payout and stability

If Atos acquires DXC Technology, three years of failed attempts by DXC Technology to turn around eroding revenues and thinning profitability would be forgiven. DXC Technology leadership would see a cash-out payday, while remaining assets (people and capabilities) would move to a more stable corporate environment with a long-term view and objective, something Atos is strong at setting up and following through on.