TBR estimates over 1.2 million network sites and cell sites will become mini data center (edge) locations globally by 2025, up from nearly 9,000 sites globally at the end of 2019. The primary driver of edge build-outs from 2019 to 2024 is telcos’ and cablecos’ network transformations, which entail migrating to a cloudified and virtualized network, and webscales’ edge initiatives to support their cloud businesses and digital lifestyle endeavors. In this new architecture, network functions will be virtualized and housed in network functions virtualization infrastructure, which is essentially a data center. Network sites, such as central offices, have been the primary edge compute locations to date, with cell site builds expected to ramp up significantly in 2021 and become the primary locations for the CSP edge by 2025.

Most CSP edge sites will be located in the U.S. and China by 2025

TBR estimates over two-thirds of global far edge sites that are owned or leased by CSPs will be located in the U.S. and China by 2025. This heavy concentration of sites will be due, in part, to webscales pushing the ecosystem into the edge to realize their distributed computing initiatives, which encompass migrating mission-critical and latency-sensitive enterprise workloads into their clouds as well as enabling and supporting their digital lifestyle initiatives.

Telecom and cable operators in these two countries will also be active participants in building out their own edge infrastructure, but this will mostly be to transform their networks into automated, virtualized and cloudified systems.

CSPs in other countries will also build out edge compute infrastructure over the next five years, but the scale will be dwarfed by what stakeholders in the U.S. and China intend to pursue.

TBR’s Telecom Edge Compute Market Forecast, which is global in scope, details edge compute spending trends among communication service providers (CSPs), such as telecom operators, cable operators and webscales. This research includes current-year market sizing and a five-year forecast by multiple edge compute market segments and geographies, with the most recent publication covering 2019 to 2024.

TBR perspective

EY’s latest Global Information Security Survey illuminates critical aspects of how EY sees itself positioned in the cybersecurity services market, even as it informs on the trends and troubling developments across the information security space. Reviewing a preview of the results, TBR was struck by three elements: First, EY clearly sees itself as the bridge between security professionals and their internal colleagues, a role that requires technical expertise and, more importantly, trust from all sides. Second, understanding the toughest challenges facing chief information security officers (CISOs) does not require EY staff to be security experts as much as it requires navigating clients’ organizations and budgets and metrics. Third, evaluating security concerns (or lack thereof) across an entire client’s organization becomes even more challenging for EY when the threats change dramatically, as this year’s survey shows.

The bridge between security and … everyone else

When previewing the survey results with TBR, EY security leaders repeatedly described the firm’s role within a client’s organization as the bridge: between security professionals and business leaders, between security professionals and board members, and between security professionals and industry leaders (both internal and external). According to EY, the firm revamped the survey for 2020 with a fresh approach to reflect clients’ emerging appreciation for the role bridging often difficult and strained relationships between security professionals and their own colleagues. One of the starkest findings, in TBR’s view, showed respondents’ ratings of the relationships between the security teams and other groups within their organizations, ranging from Neutral, Distrust or Non-Existent to High Trust and Consultation. Not surprisingly, IT departments had the most trust in security teams while more than 70% of the respondents indicated the relationship between marketing and security teams rated neutral or worse. While understandable that marketing teams would chafe at restrictions placed on them by security concerns, EY’s critical insight revolved around “New Initiative Owners,” which includes marketing. If new investments and reallocated budget dollars (as well as C-Suite and board interest) flow toward lines of business, R&D and marketing, but security teams have poor relationships with those groups at more than 55% of enterprises, EY’s role as a bridge becomes even more critical. Security teams cannot get sustained support and new funding if their colleagues driving new business do not see them as teammates or even positive actors within the organization.

TBR believes that EY’s efforts to position as a bridge conforms with the firm’s overall approach to consulting and plays to EY’s strengths around risk and compliance. In addition, playing that role demands a high level of trust among all the groups within a client; EY has invested heavily in building that level of trust and continues to benefit from it. Immediate technology-centric opportunities in connection with migration and management of SAP S/4HANA workloads can serve as a use case and strengthen EY’s trust with the IT buyer, a persona the firm looks to strengthen its relationship with, especially when it comes to application and data security management. Challenging for EY, however, is the fact that most organizations continue to make reactionary decisions around security and frequently bring security concerns and requirements into a business initiative well after the first few developmental stages. These variables create opportunities for EY as a security services consultancy and potentially enhance the firm’s role within clients.

In a discussion with TBR prior to the release of the 2020 Global Information Security Survey, EY previewed the survey’s findings and how the firm sees a changing role for itself in the security services market. In TBR’s view, the survey’s most notable findings underscore strategic moves by EY to evolve its security services practice, including a focus on bridging organizational gaps between security teams and business leaders within EY’s clients.

Consolidation continues

SAIC’s agreement to purchase Unisys’ federal business for $1.2 billion (which includes present value tax assets of approximately $175 million) is just the latest example of the continued consolidation of the public sector IT services market, which has been ongoing for the past four years. For example, Leidos (NYSE: LDOS) purchased Lockheed Martin’s (NYSE: LMT) IT services business; General Dynamics Information Technology (GDIT; NYSE: GD) purchased CSRA; DXC Technology’s (NYSE: DXC) U.S. Public Sector business combined with Vencore and KeyPoint Government Solutions to form Perspecta (NYSE: PRSP), which subsequently purchased Knight Point Systems in 2019. The same year, SAIC purchased Engility, CACI (NYSE: CACI) made six acquisitions and Raytheon (NYSE: RTN) announced a “merger of equals” with United Technologies (NYSE: UTX), to be finalized in 2020. Additionally, Leidos recently finalized its purchase of Dynetics and announced the purchase of BAE’s airport security business only days before SAIC announced its plans to acquire Unisys Federal. Along with these marquee deals, the market saw a smattering of smaller and/or less strategic deals over the past four years. Much of this M&A activity has in some way emphasized scaling to compete for mega-deals such as Next Generation Enterprise Networks Re-compete (NGEN-R) or Defense Enterprise Office Solution (DEOS) contracts. Based on recent market activity and the federal government’s increasing emphasis on digital transformation and next-generation technologies, it seems unlikely the need for scale will diminish for federal market players anytime soon. For SAIC to acquire another company of this size so quickly after the purchase of Engility only underscores the importance the company’s leadership places on scale. In fact, this purchase would theoretically boost SAIC to fourth place in TBR’s Public Sector IT Services Benchmark (behind only Leidos, GDIT and Booz Allen Hamilton [NYSE: BAH]) based on the most recent trailing 12-month federal revenues of the companies we track.

Unisys Federal impact and opportunities

Aside from the additional scale in both employees and revenue, Unisys Federal will provide SAIC with deeper access to the Department of Homeland Security and Treasury Department through U.S. Customs and Border Protection (CBP) and the IRS, respectively. For calendar year 2019, Unisys Federal had approximately $179 million in obligations to CBP and $84 million in obligations to the IRS. Both agencies are relatively underpenetrated by legacy SAIC and should provide more opportunity for growth with other civilian agencies. Unisys Federal realized a CAGR of 10% over the last two years, far outstripping the average of 4.6% for the 15 companies tracked in TBR’s Public Sector IT Services Benchmark, supported by a $1.8 billion backlog (2.6 backlog-to-revenue ratio), which TBR believes should provide ample opportunity for the new SAIC to continue Unisys Federal’s strong growth, especially in cloud adoption and other modernization services. Most of this backlog consists of slightly higher-margin projects than legacy SAIC engagements. TBR expects this deal will improve margins for SAIC by somewhere between 20 to 40 basis points by the two-year mark. In addition to the scale, agency access and large backlog, SAIC now has the right to sell CloudForte, a key platform for Unisys Federal’s business in the public sector that typically forms the backbone for the cloud services the company has delivered and likely will continue to offer as part of SAIC.

TBR believes SAIC’s (NYSE: SAIC) purchase of Unisys Federal, announced on Feb. 6, 2020, will provide the combined company with broader agency access and a strong potential for growth while signaling the extreme confidence of SAIC’s leadership. We also believe the lack of IP included in the deal and the challenges associated with SAIC’s previous and upcoming integrations mean this deal likely carries more risk than reward. This acquisition comes almost exactly one year after SAIC’s purchase of Engility for $2.5 billion, which has yet to produce organic growth for SAIC, though SAIC claims cost synergies have been fully realized. The inorganic boost of Unisys Federal (which achieved approximately $689 million in revenue for the trailing 12-month period ending Sept. 30, 2019, with an impressive 10% two-year compound annual growth rate) will bring the combined organization’s annual federal revenue for the same 12-month period to approximately $6.6 billion on a pro forma basis.

Accenture’s steady appetite, Amazon’s potential new offering and Google’s uncertain moves

Accenture’s acquisition of Clarity Insights follows the company’s INTIENT purchase and rounds out a typically active acquisition year for one of the leaders in TBR’s HITS benchmark. Clarity Insights brings Accenture AI and machine learning capabilities, 350 healthcare data scientists, and healthcare industry clients. As noted in our most recent full report on Accenture’s HITS business, “Accenture targeted the AI opportunity in life sciences in mid-2019, launching its INTIENT platform for collecting, storing, monitoring and analyzing data from life sciences clients’ business environments. The platform leverages Accenture Applied Intelligence to provide AI and analytics services, improving efficiency and data management.” Beyond extending Accenture’s capabilities, the Clarity Insights acquisition reinforces Accenture’s strategy around AI and life sciences that the INTIENT purchase supported. The report adds, “TBR believes Accenture must foster industry-specific partnerships to extend the capabilities of INTIENT and drive traction for the platform in the industry.” TBR will closely track how Accenture’s partnerships evolve and how the company drives new revenue based on these acquisitions.

Echoing Accenture’s focus on AI, Amazon acquired Health Navigator, a platform designed to foster more expeditious collaboration between healthcare providers and patients, in part through natural language processing and enhanced analytics. Amazon reportedly purchased the company amid efforts to build out Amazon Care, its in-house healthcare services, which it launched in September 2019. On the surface, Amazon’s healthcare-related acquisitions and moves denote neither an immediate threat to traditional HITS vendors nor a clear signal Amazon intends to become a different kind of player in the HITS space. Analyzing Amazon only on the surface would be foolishly shortsighted. Once the company irons out the challenges within Amazon Care, including fully integrating Health Navigator, TBR expects the company will craft a new offering for Amazon clients, potentially starting first with healthcare joint venture partners JPMorgan (NYSE: JPM) and Berkshire Hathaway (NYSE: BRK.A; NYSE: BRK.B). At 1.2 million employees for those three companies combined, Amazon would have a sizable test bed for enhancing current capabilities and developing new offerings. If Amazon can demonstrate an ability to provide top-notch healthcare services for its own employees and a few select partners, every household will wonder if the first step in getting healthcare should start with, “Alexa …”     

In acquiring Fitbit, Alphabet (Google) alarmed some data privacy and industry analysts concerned that the search engine and advertising giant bought the wearables company to gain access to massive amounts of personal, and specifically healthcare-related, data. Both companies’ executives declared data protections would be unchanged and the underlying reasons for the acquisition centered on Fitbit’s expertise and intellectual property around wearable devices and health-tracking applications, platforms and user experience. In TBR’s view, acquiring Fitbit conforms with Google’s overall expansion strategy and specifically boosts the company’s potential role in the overall HITS space. Enhancing Fitbit’s platform with Google’s AI capabilities could further minimize perennial HITS challenges, such as around data privacy and population health, but only if Google can manage the delicate tasks of leveraging user data without violating privacy, crafting and enhancing algorithms that improve the user experience, and maintaining the streamlined seamless flexibility of Fitbit even as the data flows into the highly regulated healthcare ecosystem.