NTT Data closes acquisition of Dell Services
NTT Data closed its $3.1 billion acquisition of Dell Services on November 2, finalizing a deal that should help the Japanese company come closer to its goal of becoming one of the top five global IT services providers.
The newly acquired business will on an interim basis be called NTT DATA Services. NTT Data CEO John McCain will have overall responsibility for leading the business, while Suresh Vaswani, formerly president of Dell Services, will serve as president of NTT DATA Services.
NTT Data was already a leading firm in the IT services sector, with approximately $16 billion in global revenue and employees in more than 50 countries. However, the market has seen some notable shifts as offshore providers grow and pure cloud providers like AWS and Google gain market share. Additionally, the sector has seen other deals like NTT's acquisition of Dell Services, such as HPE's decision to spin off its IT services business and merge it with CSC.
For its part, NTT Data -- which is part of the Japanese conglomerate NTT Group -- has been aggressively acquiring other businesses for several years to expand its global reach. The Dell Services acquisition was significant in that there was less than 10 percent client overlap between the two companies, even though they share complementary portfolios.
"Bringing Dell on board really provides additional breadth and scale to a portfolio we've been marketing for many decades," NTT Data president Marv Mouchawar told ZDNet.
In order to capitalize on that, "we'll continue to drive our first and foremost priority, which is ensuring a high level of client satisfaction and unwavering commitment to our clients' success," Mouchawar said, calling that level of service "a key differentiator for us in the marketplace."
The company's strategy for providing that quality service revolves around its expertise in certain verticals, including healthcare and life sciences, financial services, manufacturing, and the public sector. The Dell Services team brings expertise in all of those areas. To hit the ground running from Day One, Mouchawar said the new company will be targeting key offerings, in areas like automation and analytics, to those specific verticals.
"In each and every industry segment that we're working with, they are looking for a partner that can really help them evolve their business, and to be able to do that you need to be able to understand their business," he said. "You need to have the expertise in that industry line, whether it's banking or healthcare... to know where that specific industry is going from a business perspective and be able to blend that into the technology aspect of it."
Increasingly, Mouchawar added, clients are looking for "a high-value provider that wants to be an intimate partner with clients."
Now that acquisition is finalized, NTT Data Services is launching an ad campaign stressing its expertise and commitment to service. The campaign is aggressively focused on their target verticals and is using more advanced techniques like competitive conquesting to pull traffic from competitors' websites.
The campaign, said chief marketing officer Mona Charif, will have the added benefit of motivating employees to embrace the newly-formed company. Additionally, the company has created an employee app to share information across the company.
"We're undergoing an extensive change management program to make sure our employees are brought along on the journey," she said. That said, there isn't too much concern about changes in corporate culture.
"For the Dell Services team, it really does feel like we're coming home to a pure services team," Charif said.