|
Author: Douglas Hayward
Atos Euronext Market Solutions (AEMS), the joint venture owned by Atos Origin and Euronext, has taken a stake in a UK provider of specialist financial-services software. AEMS has bought a 19.5% stake in London-based Coexis, which produces the Syn~ software package. Syn~ is a process and rules engine which allows applications to be modified by business analysts (rather than by programmers), promising faster and cheaper changes in applications in response to new business needs.
AEMS will use Coexis to adapt the applications it uses to run its clients' processes and also to help design new applications. In particular, AEMS is interested in using Coexis to design new services in response to two pan-European financial-services initiatives, MiFID (the Markets in Financial Instruments and Directive) and ESES (the Euroclear Settlement for Euro-Zone Securities). These initiatives should prompt significant levels of technology and business change in some financial institutions.
Comment: Why should an outsourcer take an equity stake in a niche software house? Because intellectual property (such as software packages) is a key asset - and potentially a differentiator - for outsourcers with pretensions to supply value-added services beyond "lift and shift". Deployment of high-quality proprietary software can add significant value to an outsourcing deal - for client and supplier alike. And as outsourcers get closer to the core business of their clients, they need to become highly specialised not just in vertical sub-sectors but also in business processes.
This means that software that allows business analysts (and not just IT people) to change the applications that support and execute business processes on-the-fly will be increasingly important to IT services providers in future. This is especially true of process outsourcers (such as AEMS), whose customers will demand more and more flexibility from their outsourced systems. One way of providing such flexibility is to break the monopoly of modifying key applications that the IT function too often retains.
By allying itself to a local niche player, this deal may also help AEMS to expand its UK business, which is not yet as strong as its continental European operation.
|
