Cognizant To Acquire AustinCSI In Digital Transformation Play

‘AustinCSI has built a stellar reputation by improving business outcomes for some of the world‘s most recognizable brands, particularly in the telecommunications, media, technology and automotive sectors, markets where Cognizant is also strong,’ says Michael Valocchi, senior vice president and head of Cognizant consulting and Americas strategy, in a statement.

Global IT solution provider Cognizant Tuesday unveiled the planned acquisition of digital transformation consulting company AustinCSI as a way to expand its capabilities for helping clients with their digital strategies.

Plano, Texas-based AustinCSI, founded in 2007 by co-CEOs Karen Moree and Rizwan Sheikh, started with two employees but since grew to a team spanning 10 states whose clients include Fortune 50 enterprises. It offers a wide range of services around cloud strategy and modernization, data-focused business intelligence and analytics, product strategies and management, automation including AI and machine learning, and compliance and governance.

Cognizant, ranked No. 7 in CRN’s 2022 Solution Provider 500, is an $18.5-billion IT solution provider with about 350,000 employees worldwide. About 31 percent of its total revenue comes from financial services, 29 percent from health sciences, 24 percent from products and resources, and 16 percent from the communications, media, and technology industries.

[Related: Cognizant Fires Head Of Americas Business For ‘Behavior Inconsistent With Company Policy’]

Cognizant expects AustinCSI’s enterprise cloud and data analytics expertise to help expand Cognizant’s consulting practice and advisory capabilities related to clients’ digital transformation strategies and industry-led solutions, the company said in a statement. The acquisition is also expected to help Cognizant in its move to expand capabilities in data and artificial intelligence, cloud, digital engineering, and IoT.

Terms of the deal were not released. Teaneck, N.J.-based Cognizant expects the acquisition to close by the end of the year.

Cognizant spokespeople were not available to talk about the planned acquisition by press time.

However, Michael Valocchi, senior vice president and head of Cognizant consulting and Americas strategy, said in a prepared statement that his company is seeing accelerating client demand for end-to-end digital strategy and industry-specific solutions.

“AustinCSI has built a stellar reputation by improving business outcomes for some of the world‘s most recognizable brands, particularly in the telecommunications, media, technology and automotive sectors, markets where Cognizant is also strong,” Valocchi said. “We look forward to welcoming AustinCSI’s talented experts to our team and further enriching the value we‘re providing to our clients as they embrace cloud, AI, data analytics, and other advancing technologies.”

AustinCSI is Cognizant’s second acquisition in 2022. The company earlier this month unveiled plans to acquire the professional services and application management practices of Dallas-based Workday channel partner OneSource Virtual.

Cognizant made at least 20 acquisitions between 2019 and 2021.