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Author: Angelo Romagnoli
Earlier this week, HP has announced the acquisition of The Technology Partners (TTP), a system integrator and IT consultancy with a bias towards financial-services and telco markets. The financial details of the deal have not been disclosed. TTP is headquartered in Milan and Rome and reported revenues in 2005 of about €32m. HP will reportedly incorporate TTP's personnel (about 330 units) into its HP Services division.
After buying PDL services earlier in April (see EuroView Daily Comment, 5 April 2006) HP continues expanding in Italy. This looks like an interesting move. With the acquisition of a niche player with broad expertise in local vertical markets, HP clearly aims to improve its commercial offering by bundling its traditional delivery with TTP's expertise in IT consulting and system integration.
In our opinion, the real target of the acquisition is a major improvement in the offering for the financial sector, a vertical market in which HP is second to IBM's strong presence, and where HP is disadvantaged by the heavy concentration of IBM mainframe-based infrastructure. In this respect, HP aims to deploy TTP's consultancy in order to erode IBM's market share by easing the trickling of HP's 'post-mainframe' products such as Open Bank into a still-conservative banking market.
To a lesser extent, the acquisition of TTP may bring fresh air to other verticals such as energy and media, and the telco market. Indeed, HP is particularly strong in Italy in the latter market, its client portfolio features almost all the local major telecom player. Embedding TTP's offering into HP's should prove defensive as well as aggressive.
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