Monday Morning Impact – January 18

Published On: January 18, 2016Categories: Buzz, Uncategorized

Avnet, Inc. Announces Acquisition of ExitCertified

Avnet has acquired ExitCertified, an Ottawa, Canada-based IT training provider. The company is authorized by a variety of vendors including Amazon Web Services, Brocade, Cloudera, ForgeRock, Oracle, Pivotal, Red Hat, SAP, Symantec and Veritas.

“This acquisition is of strategic importance to Avnet Technology Solutions’ global services as it provides our customers with agile training solutions through 9,500 authorized IT training courses from more than 20 leading technology vendors,” said Mike Hurst, senior vice president of Avnet Global Services. “With ExitCertified, we expand our offering of leading, award winning courses with connected and virtual classrooms in high growth areas including big data, cloud and security along with converged and hyper-converged solutions. In addition, this acquisition will enhance Avnet Education Solutions’ market position in North America and provide a solid foundation to continue to expand our education services portfolio in Latin America, APAC and EMEA.”

ExitCertified generated revenue of approximately US $24 million in the fiscal year ended June 2015, and will be integrated into the Education Solutions group within Avnet Technology Solutions’ Global Services business.

This acquisition is expected to be immediately accretive to earnings and achieve Avnet’s corporate return on capital target of 12.5%. Cost of the acquisition was not disclosed.

Channel Impact
This addition is expected to be highly complementary to existing training infrastructure through Avnet Academy, which already includes authorized training from HP, IBM, Linux Foundation, Nutanix, Veeam and VMware.

Accenture to Acquire UK-based Formicary

Accenture has agreed to acquire Formicary, a London-based provider of consulting and systems integration services for trading platforms in the UK and North America. The acquisition is expected to strengthen Accenture’s capabilities in helping banks, asset managers, hedge funds and clearing organizations optimize their trading technology platforms for higher speed and cost efficiency. Terms of the transaction were not disclosed.

Formicary’s offerings are designed for over-the-counter (OTC) clearing, leveraging the products of a variety of companies, including Murex, Calypso and Misys Summit.

“Investment banks need to consider alternatives to costly, overly complex trading systems, which are hindering their ability to be cost-efficient, compliant with the latest regulations and competitive in highly regulated and active markets,” said Owen Jelf, global managing director of Accenture’s Capital Markets practice. “Formicary will help us strengthen our trading services capabilities to help financial services firms become more competitive and adaptive to change in continuously evolving markets.”

Formicary was founded in 2000 and has offices in London, Toronto and New York. The company’s services include trading and risk platform integration and migration, OTC clearing, custom development, managed services and customized software for a variety of clients, including tier-one investment banks, hedge funds, clearing houses and fund administrators.

Completion of the acquisition is subject to customary closing requirements.

Channel Impact
This acquisition should go nicely with Accenture’s recent acquisition of Beacon Consulting.

CompTIA Adds New Certification Exams

CompTIA, a suburban Chicago-based IT industry trade association has launched new exams for its flagship certification, CompTIA A+. The new exams place greater emphasis on security, mobility, operating systems and other fundamental skills that are increasingly in-demand.

“Today’s IT technicians support a broader variety of computing devices and operating systems than ever before,” says Todd Thibodeaux, president and CEO, CompTIA. “An IT technician has to be knowledgeable working with tablets, smartphones, laptops and desktops running iOS, Android, Windows and OS X connected to secure local networks and the cloud all at the same time. The updated CompTIA A+ exams reflect this reality.”

Eight of the nine exam domains in the CompTIA A+ 900 series touch on security topics, requiring candidates to have a deeper mastery of security concepts. Candidates are tested on their ability to apply security concepts, including supporting and securing access to data by properly using authentication, access control and encryption.

The new exams also cover the basics of cloud computing, virtualization, desktop imaging and deployment.

Certification candidates are tested on their ability to follow and use decision trees for diagnosing, resolving and documenting common hardware and software issues across a variety of devices; and applying principles of customer service to help resolve IT issues.

Channel Impact
As technologies continue to evolve, it is crucial the training tracks be constantly updated to reflect new technologies and new market realities.

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