Capgemini, Accenture Buy Salesforce Partners
Two giants in the solution provider space began the New Year by boosting their cloud capabilities through their acquisitions of two European-based Salesforce partners.
Consulting, technology and outsourcing service giant Capgemini on Tuesday acquired Munich-based Oinio, a leading Salesforce partner on the continent. That came a day after Accenture's purchase of CRMWaypoint, based in The Netherlands. That marked Accenture's second Salesforce partner acquisition within months; in September, it bought Cloud Sherpas. Details on both deals were not disclosed.
Accenture has more than 350,000 employees worldwide and is on Fortune’s Global 500; Capgemini’s roster numbers around 180,000 and is on the Fortune Global 2000 list.
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With these acquisitions, both Capgemini and Accenture are positioning themselves in the cloud brokerage and integration space, which analyst firm Technology Business Research sees as a small but growing piece of the broader cloud market, according to Bozhidar Hristov, a TBR analyst who covers Accenture.
Hristov said TBR expects the market will soon pick up speed and grow significantly over the next five years as enterprise-level companies move more of their IT environments to the cloud and seek to centralize and integrate management of those environments.
Hristov said Accenture’s investments in companies such as Cloud Sherpas and CRMWaypoint, as well as the company's other movements, will help position it as a cloud leader as it provides services across multi-cloud environments.
Through its bolt-on acquisition of Oinio, Paris-based Capgemini will add over 100 employees in Germany and China to its 180,000 person-strong employee base, bolstering its digital growth and building on its capabilities to providing digital transformation services around Salesforce solutions in both countries and throughout the world.
Oinio, a Salesforce Platinum Cloud Alliance partner, has become one of the larger European players in the deployment and associated consulting services for Salesforce’s cloud-based CRM and digital marketing solutions, with more than 600 current projects in life sciences, manufacturing and financial services, according to a statement from Capgemini.
"The recognized expertise of Oinio will allow us to reinforce our position in the European and Asian markets, while strengthening our partnership with Salesforce globally," Jean Lassignardie, Capgemini corporate vice president, said in a prepared statement. "Together, we will be able to quickly deploy the most innovative solutions to support our customers in their business transformation and growth acceleration."
Oinio CEO Maic Stohr said in a statement that his company will be better prepared to scale Salesforce-based solutions to enterprise-level businesses and drive quicker business outcomes.
"It’s a commitment to our customers, our team and to the digital era,’ he said.