Accenture Continues Buying Binge With Acquisition of Oracle Cloud Provider Certus

Accenture has inked an agreement to acquire Certus Solutions in a deal that will boost the $35 billion system integrator behemoth's Oracle Cloud capabilities.

The deal marks the company's fifth acquisition this year and one of more than 70 over the last three years as part of a no holds barred cloud and digital transformation services offensive.

[Related: Accenture CEO Nanterme: 'It Would Take Two Days' To Describe All The Opportunities Around AI]

’They are a serial acquirer,’ said Martin Wolf, president of martinwolf M&A Advisors of Walnut Creek, Calif., one of the top channel investment advisory deal makers.’They’re going to be one of the most aggressive acquirers globally. They will be in the top ten of acquirers in the world. That is not a weakness. That is a strength.’

The key to success of the deal will be whether Accenture can retain the Certus Oracle cloud services talent once the deal is finalized, said Wolf.

’I think Accenture continues to try and do the right thing at a high level," he said. "It is a smart idea. The devil is in the details in regard to whether they can retain the talent. Every time I see a deal like this I smile. They are not burdened with legacy issues.’

Certus, which claims to be the first Oracle UK partner to specialize in the Oracle cloud, has 86 employees with 45 percent in consulting and 25 percent in business development, according to its LinkedIn account.

Certus says it has completed over 30 cloud projects in 100 countries, according to its LinkedIn profile. It also claims to be the first dedicated Oracle Cloud support service and the first to tailor an Oracle Cloud solution for the Public Sector on G-Cloud, according to its LinkedIn profile.

This move provides even more services muscle for Accenture which this year was listed as one of the Magic Quadrant leaders for Oracle Applications services alongside Wipro, Infosys, Deloitte by Gartner, a Stamford, Conn. market research firm.

Accenture, which was recently awarded the 2018 Partner of the Year for Oracle ERP Cloud in the UK & Ireland by Oracle, has more than 54,000 Oracle consultants.

Zahra Bahrololoumi, head of Accenture Technology for UK & Ireland, said in a prepared statement that the deal brings Accenture a "team with highly respected Oracle Cloud expertise."

Furthermore, Bahrololoumi said the deal will expand Certus' market reach into "more areas" of the Oracle product and services portfolio.

Certus Solutions founder and CEO and founder Mark Sweeney said in a prepared statement that one of the big reasons for the company's success is the "quality" of its employees. "This is a market that needs specialists with broad experience, which is rare in this highly demanding and competitive market," he said.

Bhaskar Ghosh, group chief executive, Accenture Technology Services, said in a prepared statement that the deal is focused on delivering the latest innovations in cloud, analytics, intelligent automation and artificial intelligence.

’With the addition of Certus Solutions, we’re further expanding our Oracle Cloud services and capabilities that help organizations accelerate their digital transformation and achieve better business outcomes," he said.

Oracle founder and CTO Larry Ellison recently laid out a broad and deep AI based autonomous database strategy aimed at differentiating the database market leader from AWS and other cloud competitors.The latest generation of artificial intelligence, combining neural networks with machine learning, finally realizes the long-awaited promise of the technology.

"We are doing things that hitherto have been considered unimaginable by computers," said Ellison, citing as examples self-driving cars and computer facial recognition.