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Accenture PLC announced today that it is taking over umlaut SE, an engineering and technology company active in the automotive industry, among others, in order to expand its industrial “Internet of Things” business.

The financial terms of the transaction were not disclosed. On your websiteThe German-based company umlaut claims to have more than 4,000 employees and annual sales of over 340 million euros or around 412 million US dollars.

Accenture is one of the world’s largest technology service providers with more than half a million employees. The company builds software for its corporate customers, supports them in managing their infrastructure and provides support for cloud projects. Accenture is also active in some less technology-oriented areas of the professional services market, including management consulting.

In recent years, the company has invested a lot of money in expanding its Industry X division, which is targeting the so-called industrial IoT market. Industrial companies and manufacturers are increasingly investing in technology, especially in cloud services, in order to increase operational efficiency. The trend is creating new revenue opportunities not only for cloud providers and other technology companies, but also for service companies like Accenture that can help implement technology projects.

Accenture has bought more than 20 companies since 2017 to expand its Industry X business. With more than $ 410 million in annual sales and over 4,000 employees, Umlaut is one of the largest acquisitions to date.

The German company has more than 20 subsidiaries that operate in various areas. According to umlaut, it helps industrial companies develop new hardware products and test so-called “smart connected products” such as smart cars. Software development is listed as a further focus.

The company started in 2019 after being spun off from the management consultancy P3 Group GmbH. This year, umlaut entered into a partnership with Amazon.com Inc. to provide systems integration and testing services for automakers looking to add Alexa to vehicles.

More recently umlauts in partnership with lidar sensor manufacturer Velodyne Lidar Inc. to support joint customers in the automotive sector. In announcing this partnership, the company shared some details about its business in the automotive sector. According to umlaut, the company has been in the market for autonomous driving and advanced driver assistance systems for more than a decade before it was spun off from the P3 Group.

Accenture is expanding its focus on the industrial IoT market at a time when the biggest players in technology are doing the same. In December, Amazon Web Services Inc. debuted a platform called AWS IoT SiteWise Edge for monitoring the health of industrial plants. Microsoft Corp. again was expand its Azure Digital Twins platform, which enables companies to create simulations of industrial systems for analysis.

For professional service companies and consulting firms like Accenture, the income opportunities are substantial. Industrial companies with limited software know-how often need external support in order to use complex technologies such as digital twin tools. In addition, the technology deployments must be retained after the initial setup, which creates opportunities for even more service revenues.

In addition to industry, Accenture is also striving for digital transformation projects in other areas. As part of that effort, the company raised $ 3 billion for the past year start a new business area is dedicated to supporting companies with the introduction of the public cloud. When the plan for the unit was announced, Accenture announced that it would generated $ 11 billion in revenue from cloud deals in fiscal 2019, about a quarter of total revenue that year.

Image: Michael Gray / Flickr

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