Accenture’s Cloud Acquisition Spree Continues With Cygni

Accenture’s purchase of cloud developer Cygni marks the solution provider’s seventh acquisition in March.

Accenture’s acquisition spree to significantly beef up its cloud business continued Monday with the purchase of cloud-native development firm Cygni, marking the seventh purchase this month for the IT services powerhouse.

Accenture, which made CRN’s 2021 Tech Elite 250 list, has been rapidly acquiring many cloud companies this year as part of its $3 billion Accenture Cloud First initiative aimed at helping businesses quickly build cloud-first infrastructures and drive digital transformation. Accenture Cloud First includes a multiservice group of 70,000 cloud professionals out of the company’s 537,000 global employees.

The Chicago-based solution provider giant is spending millions on buying cloud-focused IT companies to boost cloud sales, capabilities, cloud teams and market presence across the globe. Swedish cloud vendor Cygni develops cloud-native full-stack solutions to help companies transform via advanced technical software development services. Financial terms were not disclosed.

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Cygni, founded in 2006, has 190 developers who provide a range of IT consulting and implementation services across the technology stack, including serverless and cloud.

“Companies who use technology to master change will define the future,” said Karthik Narain, global lead of Accenture Cloud First, in a statement. “Having Cygni’s talented team join Accenture Cloud First strengthens our ability to help clients use the cloud and technology innovation to act faster, operate sustainably and deliver exceptional new experiences. Our new Cygni colleagues bring key skills to help clients master change in an era of compressed transformation.”

Earlier this month, Accenture also acquired Imaginea, a cloud-native platform provider based in Mountain View, Calif. Accenture also recently bought U.K.-based Infinity Works, which specializes in cloud architectures.

Accenture CEO Julie Sweet said the company was at roughly 20 percent cloud in 2020, with hopes to be around 80 percent by 2025.

During Accenture’s second fiscal quarter earnings report this month, Sweet said the COVID-19 pandemic has caused companies to greatly accelerate their cloud adoption.

“COVID has hit a giant fast-forward button to the future and we believe the demand to innovate at unprecedented speed and scale with rapid adoption of cloud, AI and other disruptive technologies is accelerating,” she said. “The move from approximately 20 percent to 80 percent in the cloud alone is a huge undertaking, and it is just the start as companies will then continue to invest to grow and innovate on their new cloud foundations.”

Accenture generated $12.2 billion in revenue during its second-quarter 2021, which ended Feb. 28, representing an increase of 8 percent year over year.

Enterprise spending on cloud infrastructure services hit a record high of $130 billion in 2020, up 35 percent annually, blowing by the $90 billion enterprises spent on data center products, according to data from IT research firm Synergy Research Group.

Over the past decade, average annual enterprise spending growth for data center hardware and software—which includes servers, storage, networking, security and associated software—was just 2 percent. Comparatively, over the past 10 years, average annual spending growth for cloud services including Infrastructure as a Service, Platform as a Service and hosted private cloud was 52 percent.