We spent a very insightful day with Capita’s IT services execs and divisional leads yesterday. Headed up by recently hired MD Mark Quartermaine (see It’s official – Quartermaine joins Capita!), and long-time Capita exec Mark Wyllie as exec director, Capita is really putting a lot of emphasis behind its vision to become a ‘pure’ IT services player. Having made a string of acquisitions in this space in the past couple of years - Ramesys (see here), Technophobia (see here), CCT (see here), Salmat, and Smiths Consulting (see here) - it now believes it has a compelling set of services to take to market.
Capita makes £600m from IT services with external customers today – but if you include all of the other IT-focused operations like Secure Information Systems (former Sungard Public Sector), Service Birmingham, Assurance and Testing, and other IT consulting activities, this could be as high as £800m.
Capita shouldn’t underestimate the challenge it will face competing head-to-head in the UK market with the likes of IBM, Accenture, HP, Logica, Capgemini, Atos, Steria, TCS, Infosys, Wipro and many, many more players, all of whom have years – even decades - of experience fighting the battles as ‘pure-play’ IT services firms. Then there is the added challenge of presenting a single integrated suite of 'Capita' branded services from all of the recent acquisitions, and providing offerings that are both relevant to the market and differentiated.
We will have a lot more to say about Capita’s capabilities, strategy and most importantly, its prospects, in a future research note, but only for TechMarketView subscribers.