NTT Data To Boost Digital Design, Engineering With Planned Postlight Buy

‘Postlight builds B2C [business-to-consumer] applications these companies put in the hands of their customers so they can better engage more closely with their consumers,’ say Eric Clark, chief digital and strategy officer of NTT Data, of Postlight’s customers in verticals such as banking and media.

NTT Data, the global services arm of Japan-based NTT, Wednesday unveiled the planned acquisition of Postlight, a provider of digital strategy, design and engineering services.

The acquisition, for which no dollar value was given, is slated to close by the end of June.

Postlight will be the third acquisition NTT Data has made in this space, said Eric Clark, chief digital and strategy officer of Plano, Texas-based NTT Data, which is No. 3 on CRN’s 2022 Solution Provider 500 list.

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NTT Data in June 2021 acquired Nexient, a provider of cloud-native application and development services. That was followed in March of this year with the acquisition of Vectorform, a provider of digital application development and modernization capabilities.

“Nexient, Vectorform and Postlight form a very complementary portfolio that brings us depth in digital engineering and digital design,” Clark told CRN. “Vectorform and Postlight have a big focus on design, and Nexient has a big focus on product engineering.”

NTT Data expects to make more acquisitions in this area, Clark said.

“This is an area of high growth for us,” he said. “Nexient’s big growth since we acquired it has been high with our existing client base. So we expect more from our existing clients. The entire portfolio lets us come in and help them with their digital design.”

Postlight has been very successful in such verticals as banking and media, Clark said. Among its customers are Goldman Sachs, Bloomberg, Lowercarbon Capital, Mailchimp and the Metropolitan Transit Authority of New York.

“Postlight builds B2C [business-to-consumer] applications these companies put in the hands of their customers so they can better engage more closely with their consumers,” he said.

All three companies are U.S.-based, which is important for their customers, Clark said.

“The employees of all three are almost entirely U.S. employees,” he said. “So we’re providing an on-shore capability. All three have a lot of clients that really like the U.S. resources. But some clients do want lower-cost resources, which NTT Data can provide with our teams in Mexico and India. We refer to India as our off-shore and Mexico as our near-shore.”

On-shore operations are important, Clark said.

“Customers like to have a more interactive design experience,” he said. “They want to work closer on the design process. We are rapidly expanding our on-shore capabilities. Nexient in the past year saw its head count increase by 40 percent.”

While the emphasis on the three acquisitions is their on-shore design capabilities, they can tap into the global NTT Group for expanded resources as needed, Clark said. NTT Group spends over $3.5 billion per year on R&D and has over 5,000 R&D people including engineers, he said.

“So when we talk about design experience, it’s a great opportunity for the new acquisitions to tap into global resources to quickly grow their businesses,” he said.