CTG Acquires Eleviant Tech To Accelerate Digital Business

‘We’re trying to shift all our business towards IT services and have been transitioning away from the lowest-margin staff business. We’ve been public about that mission. We’re doing it thoughtfully, helping our customers find alternatives,’ says Tom Niehaus, CTG’s executive vice president for the Americas and for its Indian operations.

Computer Task Group Thursday has acquired Eleviant Tech, a Dallas-based developer of software and applications focused on mobility, cloud, and automation via its India-based development team, the company said Thursday.

The acquisition of Eleviant, for which Computer Task Group is paying $18.6 million plus an additional $200,000 in stock, is part of a long-term transition to providing a wide range of digital IT services, said Tom Niehaus, executive vice president for the Americas and for the Indian operations of the company, which is better known by its CTG acronym.

CTG was founded about 50 years ago with a focus on staff augmentation, but over the past several years has been moving its business to focus on IT services, Niehaus told CRN.

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“We’re trying to shift all our business towards IT services and have been transitioning away from the lowest-margin staff business,” he said. “We’ve been public about that mission. We’re doing it thoughtfully, helping our customers find alternatives.”

CTG is ranked no. 77 on the CRN 2022 Solution Provider 500 list of top channel partners.

The acquisition of Eleviant is a big more forward in that transition, Niehaus said.

“We’ve been working in India a short time, and prior to the acquisition had a 50-person team there,” he said. “This acquisition gives us a big boost. Eleviant has about 300 people, mostly engineers focused on software, in India.”

In addition to the software engineers who will now be available to help CTG provide services to its clients, primarily located in the U.S. and Europe, the Eleviant acquisition also brings to CTG a number of software applications to help boost customers’ digital capabilities, Niehaus said.

One of those is PeopleOne, an employee engagement platform that acts as an intranet that sits on Microsoft, he said. “When users sign on, they have access to all their Microsoft applications,” he said. “It also provides a single point of communications and status updates for businesses with a lot of merger and acquisition activity and who want to get everyone working on a central point.”

Other Eleviant applications include a virtual bot platform for chats and an automation platform, Niehaus said.

“The solutions Eleviant brings are very strong,” he said. “They also bring strong services in areas like mobile app and web development. This acquisition accelerates what we were already doing with customers.”

Eleviant’s customer base is primarily around the Dallas area, and between CTG and Eleviant there is only one overlapping customer, Niehaus said.

CTG has made three acquisitions, all in Europe, in the last five years as part of its transition to a focus on IT services, Niehaus said. The most recent was France-based StarDust, which specialized in automated testing and quality assurance for digital services.