Accenture to acquire umlaut

In a move that will expand its engineering capabilities in the areas of cloud, AI and 5G, global IT consulting firm Accenture is acquiring German engineering consulting firm umlaut.

The financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Umlaut’s capabilities span traditional and digital engineering services; testing and validation of smart connected products; strategy, process and organizational consulting; and hardware product development as well as software development.

More than 4,200 engineers and consultants from umlaut will join Accenture’s Industry X services group, which aims to combine Accenture’s data and digital knowhow with engineering digitization services.

“We predicted that digital would ultimately be applied at scale to the core of a company’s business – the design, engineering and manufacturing of their products. And, for nearly a decade Accenture has been building the unique capabilities and ecosystem partnerships to combine the power of digital with traditional engineering services,” said Accenture CEO Julie Sweet. “COVID-19 has accelerated the need for companies to transform these core operations, and umlaut’s leading and highly-specialized engineering services will enhance our ability to meet the accelerating demand and also continue innovating for our clients.”

In April, Accenture acquired French cybersecurity firm OpenMinded as part of the company’s effort to expand the Accenture security arm’s presence in France and into Europe as a whole. Accenture also recently acquired cloud analytics firm Core Compete. The vendor leverages machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) to provide managed services, cloud data warehousing, data analysis tools, and SAS on cloud services.

The latest acquisition builds upon the purchase of Businet System, Real Protect, and Wolox this year, among other companies. According to Accenture, umlaut is the next in a series of 22 acquisitions the firm has made since 2017 to build its Industry X capabilities.