Global Technology Solutions leader Cyient Ltd. have announced they are set to complete a USD$37 acquisition of Singapore-based firm Grit Consulting, a business with deep-rooted consulting expertise in asset-intensive industries like metal mining and energy. Grit Consulting has approx. 100 employees and consultants, and reported a turnover of USD$18.1 million in the financial year of 2022.

Cyient’s acquisition of Grit Consulting is expected to be completed on or before 5 May 2022, and will enable Cyient customers to tap into both Grit’s deep expertise and Cyient’s technology solutions capabilities, empowering Cyient to further their consulting-led, industry-centric, technology solutions growth aspirations.

This latest investment by Cyient follows closely on the heels of their previous EU$94 million acquisition of American headquartered plant and product engineering services company Citec, its largest acquisition to date, the largest outbound acquisition by an Indian engineering services company on record to date.

“We are expanding our Cyient Consulting practice with this investment. It aligns with our consulting-led growth strategy, and we see great synergies across talent, footprint, and customers. With Grit Consulting’s expertise in business transformation and our technology solutions capabilities, we can deliver strategic outcomes for our customers.”, said Cyient’s Managing Director and CEO, Krishna Bodanapu.

Jeremy Brown, Founding Partner, Grit Consulting stated “We are extremely honored to be acquired by Cyient and see enormous synergies in supporting our customers given Cyient’s international reach and technology capabilities”.

Mr Brown went on to say “We believe that this coming-together of Cyient’s technology solutions and our innovative socio-technical design consulting approaches will further strengthen our capabilities to enable sustainable performance improvements and cultural enhancement across the organization.”

Additionally this investment provides Cyient access to new customer portfolios and leverages customer, geographic, and talent synergies of both businesses, to enable expansion and deepen Cyient’s mining industry footprint.

“As we forge ahead on our path to be leading consulting-led, industry-centric, global technology solutions provider, the capabilities of Grit Consulting and our consulting practice will be of greater strategic value to our customers in their digital transformation journey.”, said Meenu Bagla, CMO of Cyient.

This acquisition seems well-timed in light of a recently published Global Management Consulting Services Market Report from BusinessWire, which estimates the global management consulting services market to reach USD$1.2 trillion by the year 2025.

Full release here: 

https://www.cyient.com/prlisting/press/cyient-to-acquire-singapore-based-grit-consulting-to-strengthen-its-global-technology-consulting-practice

The prospective industrial network is taking the same route as that of Operations Technology (OT) and Information Technology (IT). Varying from WAN and LAN, holding a third-party network to outsource cloud-based SaaS solutions via public clouds.

Presently, the sole aim of most organisations is to acquire real Business Operations Transformation while acquiring more significant business concessions, ROI from network technologies acquisitions, and services sustaining their business core.

Perhaps I can witness the enterprise IT transformation, as the businesses have been continually developing systems, indulging in crafting designs, plans and following the trial and error to roll out Private Converged enterprise networks, with a motive to leverage 5G in particular, regardless of their size and shape. 

But what’s unfortunate is the challenges the enterprise business transformation has brought along due to a lack of experience and skills. This frequently leads the HR departments of the enterprises to struggle while sourcing in-house expertise and understanding of digital enterprise transformation networks. As a result, the challenges bind them to bring those powers to their organisations from the market for a Partner of Choice. 

The difficulties enterprises face when embracing and operating consolidated digital enterprise transformation networks, and 5G solutions are the expertise, as these aren’t their core business. Instead, they ought the suited technology and telecoms counterpart to function with to yield flourishing results.

I recently hosted and mediated a live-stream discussion featuring two globally leading telecom executives, Aashu Virmani, Vice President & Client Partner, Communications, Cyient, and Ray Achemedei, General Manager, Technology & Digital Transformation. Horizon Power, for Cyient, titled “CXO Cyience – Designing Networks of Tomorrow.” 

Our conversation was near and around the emerging transition in converged networks as enterprise IT transformation by assembling their own remote converged networks. Our discussion also covered some of their distinctive insights and stances on conceiving a savvy infrastructure. 

Though there wasn’t much that we could cover in our short conversation, after concluding our live stream, I realised that there were two major takeaway points that I believed needed to be heightened for you people. So here are two essential highlights I brought away from our live-stream event and what Aashu and Ray had to articulate on each matter when I requested them both to confer on them.

Takeaway #1

Early adopters witness prospects for instantaneous triumphs, and early adopter yields from Next-Generation Networks mainly fused personal networks across firms, which are usually prepared to leverage 5G, are flaring up prospects on multiple fronts, resulting in the advancement of creative business prototypes as new use cases for Customer and Business conditions arise.

I’m witnessing an inflated number of prospects for corps to attain influential Enterprise Business Transformation via Next Generation Networks by embracing new functioning models and use cases that access the technology that enables consolidated and Next Generation Networks.

Undoubtedly, this was conferred in profundity during our live-stream affair. Still, I felt there was more that my ace visitors could convey, so I contacted Ray and Aashu Virmani and requested them to elaborate the topic with instances of where they are witnessing possibilities for both prompt victories and early adopter returns. So here is what they had to state:

“Cyient is internally organised across ten industry verticals, from Communications to Utilities, Mining, Rail, Aerospace, and Medical – just to name a few. Within the past six months, we’ve seen over a dozen of our clients, with whom we were previously engaged for their vertical-specific use cases, start initiatives around communications and developing their own private networks — all in the context of their own enterprise transformation. More and more, we are recognizing internally how our Communications business is fast becoming ‘horizontal’ across all of our other verticals when it comes to private networks. We are simultaneously engaging with our CSP customers to help them develop and expand their implementation practices around offering private networks to their enterprise accounts.”, Aashu Virmani, Vice President & Client Partner, Communications, Cyient.

“Quick wins are a great and important way to prove out and demonstrate the value of next-generation network investments, and certainly in the space we occupy there is no shortage of examples. For example, five years ago, we installed advanced metering infrastructure (AMI) to underpin our Smart Grid goals and objectives. Initially, we used it to collect, send, and analyse consumer energy consumption data. Since then, we’ve leveraged the same data sets to automatically detect neutral integrity issues. Looking to tomorrow, we want to leverage the abilities of our AMI infrastructure to self-heal, support demand-side DER management, and enhance energy efficiency.”, Ray Achemedei, General Manager, Technology & Digital Transformation, Horizon Power.

Takeaway #2

The content of architecture industries can currently think when enforcing personal networks persists in flaring up assertive new prospects for enterprise business transformation. Multiple believed the things of telcos & carriers are now obtainable to enterprise consumers across the range.

The emphasis now is not solely to construct it correctly the foremost time, but likewise, construct it ‘intelligently’ so that process & administration evolves actually and efficiently.

Corps have become ever more critical to find the best probable Partner of Choice to defend them to accomplish such transformative developments. But, unfortunately, it is not usually the core business for most institutions to enforce, function, or drive Next Generation Networks.

Similarly, I conferred this extensively with my visitors during our live-stream event. Still, I desired to proffer my ace visitors the chance to convey more on this. So I requested them to elaborate the topic with instances where they witness prospects. So here is what they had to convey:

“When it comes to intelligent network architectures, an important learning for us was that it’s not simply a case of one size fits all. If you focus on your use cases, then the right architecture/s become apparent. Once we resolved that, it was exciting to see other opportunities emerge. For example, in our case we started by looking at a use case that supported our Operational requirements, however, we subsequently realised that the architecture that emerged from this, offered support for a wide range of use cases we hadn’t considered that sat outside of our Operations group and that these particular use cases offered us the potential to develop a significant new revenue stream. In an environment where there is considerable pressure on costs and revenues, opportunities such as this are game-changing.”, Ray Achemedei, General Manager, Technology & Digital Transformation, Horizon Power.

“Developing the right architecture for a private network depends on the eventual use case (or cases) the customer is attempting to solve, and which of the following six criteria are most important drivers: coverage, latency, density, QoS, security, and cost. The right architecture, and which OEMs we use for the customer depends on which variables we are attempting to optimise, and can range between being an extension and densification of the CSP network at the enterprise premises, to being a completely air-gapped stand-alone network owned and managed by the enterprise, to a hybrid between these two extremes. The important thing to realise is that no two networks are equal because the business problem for a mining customer may be drastically different from that of a manufacturing plant owner. Having an understanding of various industry verticals gives us an advantage when it comes to tailoring a solution that is optimal for a customer.”, Aashu Virmani, Vice President & Client Partner, Communications, Cyient.

What I can conclude from what I was able to absorb and comprehend based on my prior knowledge about the related topic and the insights I received from our hearty discussion is that it is time to act as those waits are surely going to miss the opportunities that early adopters and next-gen network embracers are going to avail cause of begin, not just early but skilful birds.

Besides, please do listen via the link below if you haven’t already tuned into the exclusive panel conversation I had with Ray and Aashu. I look ahead to resuming this discussion with Ray, Aashu, and the crew at Cyient in the future.

I met with Stacey Marx, AT&T Business (President, National Business & Channels), in my recent interview. We discussed the current success tales like how AT&T Business has thrived and helped their consumers over the last 12 to 18 months, leading up to and throughout the global #COVID19 pandemic.

Stacey shared her journey and her role and responsibilities as president of National Business & Channels. She led a team of six thousand professionals, who all are committed to associating with over three million small and medium business customers, to assist them in achieving growth and maximising their potential with technology innovation by taking the benefit of products & services AT&T Business can offer.

Our fireside podcast comprises some of the recent trends, business & technology challenges, and opportunities small business operators must be considered as they look at the road forward coming out of a pandemic.

We began the conversation with my usual “get to know you” Stacey shares insights, as well as the challenges Stacey Marx faces in her life. She further shared what her business unit is responsible for, and some details around the team and ecosystem around them, and their customer base, giving us an excellent view of her journey and the excellent detail of what she and her team are offering to all.

We later discussed the challenges in deep that businesses leaders, especially within small businesses, encountered in a post-pandemic world, and how technology helping in coping with such challenges, and especially three key focus areas which I’ve been keen to consult with Stacey Marx for a while – covering:

#1 – Challenges post-pandemic world brought to SMB retail leaders

It is seen that the Retail sector is one segment other than healthcare that has carried more than its regular share of the burden to make society live through the last year and a half. 

I requested Stacy to mention the challenges she and her team are dealing with as retailers in the post-pandemic world, especially those small and medium-sized businesses that may have lesser resources.

#2 –How can the retail industry address such various challenges?

This is something only people in the retail sector can answer. Hence, I asked Stacey for the same. She explained how SMB players could look for ways and means to map their route out of their present state to place people, technology, and telecommunications at the forefront to manage such vital challenges.

#3 – AT&T Business is helping the Retail segment take advantage of its many offerings. How?

One of the challenges retailers are facing, especially Small business retailers, is finding the correct Partner of Choice to help them gain access to and implement fresh technologies like 5G. Also, they need to make sure they have the right solutions in place for the likes of Cybersecurity, as these abilities are not their core business.

Hence, I asked Stacey for the same. Stacey Marx, AT &T, conveyed the specifics on how AT & T Business assists SMBs to take advantage of their many business, technology & telecommunications offerings. We discussed various great customer stories, use cases, and real-world instances.

We led this great conversation to the end with an idea of what does Stacey believes is coming over the horizon in the next 12 to 18 months, my classic “crystal ball gazing” question, and especially what small business owners and or decision-makers must take care of as they look to the short to medium-term future.

Check out the complete interview for amazing topics and more.

The podcast was created in association with AT&T Business.

Learn more at:
AT&T Business website: http://bit.ly/attbusiness​
AT&T Business SMB web portal: http://bit.ly/attsmallbusiness