Born From Bell Canada: Ateko CEO On Turning BCE’s Services Business Into A New Company

“We launched a new digital leader, Ateko, which is focused on five platforms: ServiceNow, Salesforce, AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. ‘Ateko’ means automation and tech collaboration. That's the sense of the name, because that's what we do. We work with our customers to unlock the full potential of those platforms, because you need deep, deep expertise. You need to be a ‘surgeon’ to allow the full potential of the platform and deliver true business value, productivity, and innovation for your customers,” says CEO Guillaume Bazinet.

Scattered throughout the solutions pavilion at last week’s ServiceNow Knowledge 2025 conference were several 10x10-foot booths, the smallest size that could be ordered.

One of those, booth No. 2604, was home for a few days to ServiceNow’s newest channel partner, Ateko, which used the conference to trumpet its arrival to the ServiceNow list of channel partners.

Ateko, while a startup, has a lot of history behind it. The organization was formed by Bell Canada Enterprise from its prior acquisition of three IT service providers with a history of supporting ServiceNow, Salesforce, Azure, AWS, and Google Cloud environments.

[Related: Compucom Exec On Driving The Digital Transformation For A Now-Stand-Alone Company]

Guillaume Bazinet, founder of one of those acquired companies, FX Innovation, and now is CEO of Ateko, told CRN that Ateko was formed as a way for Bell Canada Enterprise to become a global IT services leader, particularly when it comes to digital transformation.

“So we launched a new digital leader, Ateko, which is focused on five platforms: ServiceNow, Salesforce, AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure,” Bazinet (pictured) said. “‘Ateko’ means automation and tech collaboration. That's the sense of the name, because that's what we do. We work with our customers to unlock the full potential of those platforms, because you need deep, deep expertise.”

Bazinet said his company will continue to remain a part of Bell Canada Enterprise.

“The goal is to build tremendous value within the Bell family,” he said. “So right now, the plan is to stay part of Bell. It’s a bit like other large companies, other telcos, that have IT services. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, we saw the building of TCS and NTT Data. We’re like that, but for the digital era now, a new era of cloud and AI for Bell.”

There’s a lot going on with the development of a new digital transformation startup like Ateko. For more about the company and its plans, read the full Q&A with Bazinet, which has been lightly edited for clarity.

How did Ateko get its start?

FX Innovation was acquired by Bell Canada in 2023. Bell had a great ambition to build a global leader in IT services, but more specifically in digital transformation, with deep, deep expertise in certain platforms. They truly believed the future was platform integration, adopting AI with strong data and analytics and enterprise work automation, with leveraging the hyperscalers. And this is exactly what FX Innovation was. So everything started with the acquisition of FX Innovation.

Did Bell Canada take on any investment in order to make that acquisition?

It was their own cash. It was to accelerate their play and their vision. I started with FX Innovation, which I founded and that was backed by a large Canadian pension plan, [Quebec City, Quebec-based] CDPQ. That's the beginning of the story.

Then, with the support of Bell, we did two acquisitions in 2024: HGC Technologies, a ServiceNow pure play, and CloudKettle, a Salesforce SI [systems integrator]. CloudKettle was based in Halifax [Nova Scotia] but had customers all over North America. Same for HGC Technologies, based in Montreal. But 60 percent of its revenue was from the U.S. Same for CloudKettle, doing more business in the U.S. than in Canada. FX Innovation was a leader in the ServiceNow space in Canada, as well as a cloud SI and MSP, so a strong partner of Microsoft Azure, AWS and Google Cloud.

With the two acquisitions, we decided to rebrand under one strong brand to go global, Ateko. Our booth at ServiceNow Knowledge was readied for that. We had a video produced also with ServiceNow.

So we launched a new digital leader, Ateko, which is focused on five platforms: ServiceNow, Salesforce, AWS, Google Cloud, and Microsoft Azure. ‘Ateko’ means automation and tech collaboration. That's the sense of the name, because that's what we do. We work with our customers to unlock the full potential of those platforms, because you need deep, deep expertise. You need to be a surgeon to allow the full potential of the platform and deliver true business value, productivity, and innovation for your customers. That's a global play for us. Right now, our market is Canada and the U.S., but we’re looking to expand globally.

Ateko is still fully owned by Bell Canada?

Yes, but has a fully independent internal operation. [Our] P&L [profit and loss] reports to Bell Business Markets, which is a huge part of the Bell Canada enterprise. It's the business that delivers connectivity, mobility, security, and contact center, so it’s a more traditional telco enterprise business. Ateko is a separate entity that reports to Bell Business Market. I report as the CEO of Ateko to Group President of Bell Business Market John Watson, who reports to Mirko Bibic, president and CEO of Bell Canada Enterprises, or BCE.

We’re very agile. We're a tech company. The vision of Bell was to not integrate that play into Bell because Ateko was totally a different operation, and we need to keep that agility and innovation mindset of a tech company.

You said you're working at a global expansion. What are your plans?

We really have a very strong ambition in the sense where we see the market right now, and there's a lot of places for new players. It's a market where you have a lot of M&A, from the GSIs [global systems integrators] and big advisory firms and MSPs. With all due respect to those companies, they're really wide in the term of expertise. And even a large player like Accenture at 700,000 people can’t be good at everything. So that's our mindset. We think we can build a global leader being more narrow, more focused, because technology is evolving so fast now.

Our goal, and I'm bringing back the surgeon example, but you won't get open heart surgery from a generic doctor, right? You want to have the top surgeon and exactly the kind of operation you need, right? We see things the same way. Our customers need experts and surgeons in certain products and even in certain use cases for industries. That's what we're building.

And with the pace of evolution of ServiceNow, Salesforce, AWS, GCP [Google Cloud Platform], you can't cover all products and technology. So we think we can build a multi-billion-dollar company focusing on fewer products and platforms but having deep expertise to unlock the full power of our platforms and deliver true business value for customers. That's the model. We have a strong ambition to build a billion-dollar-plus business by 2030 and then grow and build a business that's in Europe and Asia. But we’ll focus in the next two years on Northern America.

What is the company's revenue now?

Right now, we're between $250 [million] to $300 million, with 1,100 employees in Canada and the U.S. We have some facilities abroad for offshore employees in India, Morocco, and Senegal. Have you ever heard of anybody doing Morocco and Senegal? For Francophone customers in France and Quebec in Canada. It's hard to serve those customers from India. So Senegal and Morocco are great places for us. Lots of French organizations have facilities there. For the revenue, we report to Bell Business Markets under the umbrella of Bell Business Markets.

Could Ateko someday be spun off as an independent company or have its own IPO?

It's not the plan now. The plan is really to drive tremendous value for Bell Canada Enterprises and for Ateko and our customers. We think it's a great way, because there's a lot of synergies also with the traditional telco business. When you think about customer contact centers, we can leverage ServiceNow, Salesforce, and hyperscalers. So Bell is an important customer. We have a strategy with a very simple name: inside-outside. What it means is, we can leverage Bell as a lighthouse customer for testing and to do R&D and innovation and then to bring new technology to the market. This allows Bell to be innovative and us to do testing before going to external customers.

So for now, the goal is to build tremendous value within the Bell family. So right now, the plan is to stay part of Bell. It’s a bit like other large companies, other telcos, that have IT services. In the ‘80s and ‘90s, we saw the building of TCS and NTT Data. We’re like that, but for the digital era now, a new era of cloud and AI for Bell.

You mentioned other telcos that are getting into IT services. You're doing this now in 2025. Is Bell Canada and Ateko late to this business?

Not at all. I've been in that market for 25 years. And it's probably the greatest moment to be doing it with the evolution of AI and everything that means in terms of how we can deliver services and bring the technology to the next level and to radically augment the levels of productivity for customers. It's more important than ever.

Our customers are going to be disrupted by staff augmentation. The traditional approach to IT services and traditional outsourcing models is, ‘I'm gonna drive some savings for you by helping you outsource your IT.’ And that's gonna be over because that doesn't bring productivity. What customers need is not a 10-percent or 20-percent savings. They need more innovation, more productivity, to stay current in the market and stay competitive.

So it's more important to have the right SI and partners that can truly drive value from your investment in a platform as opposed to just having an SI do an implementation and then leave. You need your tech services partner to stay and make sure that you will evolve with the platform. And for that, you need to be close to your partners, close to ServiceNow and Salesforce and the hyperscalers, and really understand what is the next thing. What is the next functionality or evolution that can drive value for customers.

ServiceNow over the last couple years sometimes does an equity investment in its large partners to help them grow and become a bigger part of the ServiceNow ecosystem. Is that a possibility for Ateko?

Ateko is backed by Bell Canada. That says a lot about our mindset. We're connected to ServiceNow, Salesforce, and our own partner ventures. We have within the Bell family our own venture arm, Bell Ventures. So yes, it's part of the possibilities and options. There's nothing right now on the table, but the connections are made, and it could be part of the future.

We like to co-invest with top partners. Last year, for example, we co-invested with ServiceNow [to make Bell Canada] a lighthouse customer in the threat services management space. Bell has a very important operation. We're talking about 12,000 employees, with 6,000 trucks on the road today. So we decided to move into a strategic partnership with ServiceNow to be a lighthouse customer to redesign and rebuild ServiceNow’s Field Services Management module for the market as a whole, and we're gonna leverage it at Bell.

It was actually really interesting to team up with ServiceNow. They already had a module but needed a lighthouse customer with large operation to truly invest in and become the top platform in the field services space. They had a good product, but it was probably not at a level to answer the needs of a large-scale field service operation like Bell has. So now our team is at Bell and FX Innovation and working closely with the ServiceNow product team to build the new version of field services on ServiceNow. That's an example of Ateko in action with Bell and with ServiceNow, one of our top partners.

Ateko was officially unveiled at the ServiceNow Knowledge conference. Coincidence?

No, not a coincidence. There's a bit of timing in that, right? We completed our last acquisition in November, HGC Technologies. We wanted to have a single brand. We didn't want the headline to read, ‘FX Innovation absorbed companies.’ One way to do that was to rebrand and bring the three companies together in a branding project and for all of us to get together under a new brand. We wanted to make sure we had a brand that was strong globally, fresh, techie, and that will resonate with our employees and customers.

We started to think about that right after the HGC Technologies acquisition. We worked closely with the former CEOs of the two acquired companies. It was a fun internal project. And at the same time, the Bell board of directors met in May. So everything was getting aligned for a launch in May. So that's when we decided to do

it. The chance to leverage the energy around the Knowledge event was also important. We thought we could get as much exposure as possible along with the energy of being acknowledged as we launched the new brand.