Advising on the commercial impact of technology and
    market changes in telecoms, software and IT services

TietoEnator is a historically well-run and highly focused IT services player with a strong presence in the Nordic region. It has a clear focus on a well-defined series of vertical markets, in which it has built up considerable domain expertise.

The acquisition of EDS strengthens HP at a time when services have become ever more important to hardware original equipment manufacturers (OEMs). It offers the vendor additional means of diversifying away from a low-margin product portfolio.

While large enterprises have traditionally driven IT services demand in Japan, in the current economic conditions they are adopting cautious investment policies and multiple cost-cutting measures.

South Korea is the third largest IT services market in the Asia-Pacific region,with market growth being driven by major investments in the telecoms and media sectors.

The pressure is on Steria to demonstrate the logic of the acquisition with strong revenue growth across the group this year. The company maintains that everything is in line with pre-acquisition projections.