Acquisition expands Cognizant's IoT embedded software engineering capabilities across technology and automotive industries

Cognizant has entered into an agreement to acquire Mobica, an IoT software engineering services provider headquartered in Manchester, United Kingdom. Mobica's services span the full software development cycle, with core competencies in development, implementation, testing and deployment of embedded software, and a specialization in clients' strategic internal research and development projects.The acquisition significantly expands Cognizant's IoT embedded software engineering capabilities and provides clients with a deeper and broader array of end-to-end support to enable digital transformation. Embedded software engineering is a fast-growing segment of the IoT and engineering market. Market intelligence firm IDC forecasts global product engineering spending to increase from $83 billion in 2021 to $164 billion by 2026.1

Upon closing of the acquisition, Cognizant will add nearly 900 people across Europe and North America, including approximately 550 engineers in Poland.
"Mobica's strong track record of delivering strategic embedded software engineering services is well-aligned to Cognizant's Global 2000 client base and key industries, while its large presence in Poland significantly enhances our growing development teams in Eastern Europe," said Annadurai Elango, executive vice president of Cognizant's Core Technologies and Insights. "We believe combining Mobica's expertise with Cognizant's strong IoT and product engineering capabilities will result in enhanced digital transformation outcomes for global clients in the technology and automotive industries and beyond."
Mobica's expertise in three key areas – connected devices and digital transformation, silicon and technology platforms, and automotive and intelligent mobility – is expected to further strengthen Cognizant's client offerings and position as a strategic partner in enterprise digital transformation.
"Mobica has built a reputation for world-class IoT embedded software engineering expertise across the entire technology stack, from chip to cloud," said Sam Kingston, CEO of Mobica. "The alignment we share with Cognizant from a technology, industry and client-focus standpoint represents a strong platform for continued growth in Europe and North America, and an opportunity for our talented team to grow their skills and careers."
Mobica builds upon Cognizant's earlier efforts to establish strategic capabilities in Eastern Europe via the acquisitions of Softvision in 2018 and Devbridge in 2021, which have significant software product engineering operations in Romania and Lithuania, respectively. Upon acquiring Mobica, Cognizant will have more than 7,500 associates in Eastern Europe, including approximately 4,500 engineers.
The acquisition is expected to close in February 2023, subject to satisfaction of closing conditions. Financial details were not disclosed.

US-headquartered SaaS leader opens fifth office location in Europe in a strategic move to provide top-notch service to its European customers and partners.

-HighRadius, the global leader in Autonomous Finance Platforms for the Office of the CFO, announced their new office in Kraków, Poland. HighRadius is headquartered in Houston, Texas, and this will be their fifth regional office in Europe, after London, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Paris. The Poland office will focus on recruiting local Finance and Accounting talent to support the implementation and adoption of HighRadius solutions by the growing base of European customers.

“We are excited to open our new office in Kraków. Poland is known for being a thriving hub for Global Business Services, particularly in Finance and Accounting, which made it a perfect location for this expansion,” said Sashi Narahari, Founder and CEO of HighRadius. “Our main goal is to ensure that our existing clients in Europe get the timely service and support they deserve. With this expansion to Poland, we are better equipped to provide them with the utmost level of attention and care.”
HighRadius has been committed to providing innovative solutions that help businesses streamline their financial operations and drive growth. The company's Autonomous Finance Platform is accredited as the leader in Gartner’s 2022 Magic Quadrant for Integrated Invoice-to-Cash Applications & IDC Marketscape for Accounts Receivable Software. It is currently used by some of the biggest brands in Europe across 37 out of 44 European countries. The company also holds four US patents for its unique AI & ML powered Autonomous Platform and was named to the 2022 Forbes Cloud 100 and the 2022 CB Insights Fintech 250 list for the third time in a row.

Modus Create, a digital transformation consulting firm, announced today that it has acquired Clarisoft, a Romanian software engineering company with deep expertise in custom product development for enterprises.
This is Modus Create’s fifth acquisition in the last 12 months, topping off a year of accelerated growth and inclusion on the Inc. 5000 list for the eighth successive time. Since May, Modus Create has expanded its offerings through the acquisitions of software engineering company Tweag; product development firm Promptworks; and Atlassian consulting firms Atlas Authority and Twybee. The acquisition of Clarisoft represents Modus Create’s third acquisition in the European market.
Headquartered in Bucharest, Romania, Clarisoft is known for building quality software across enterprise, mid-market, and government clients worldwide, particularly in sectors such as healthcare, automotive, finance, and telecom. Its clients include organizations such as Cisco and Livongo Health.
Clarisoft’s CEO Bogdan Bucura will join Modus in a sales leadership role, and Development Director Mircea Enache will take on a delivery leadership role. Also joining Modus will be 40 senior engineers, designers, and project managers.
“We continue to add capabilities and talent that deepen Modus Create’s expertise as a leading global partner for product development. Adding Clarisoft to the team expands our European footprint and strengthens our offerings in enterprise software development, leading cloud platforms, and microservices delivery,” said Sarah McCasland, Chief Strategy Officer, Modus Create. “Most importantly, Clarisoft is a cultural fit that will seamlessly integrate with the Modus values of creating high-quality products for our clients.”
“By joining Modus Create, I saw an opportunity for Clarisoft to be a part of a bigger organization while still providing the type of service our clients expect,” said Bogdan Bucura, CEO, Clarisoft. “We will bring expertise in areas such as Microsoft Azure, broadening the scope of Modus’ already highly respected software engineering team. And we look forward to offering our clients the broader services Modus has in areas such as platform modernization and digital operations.”

Celebrating its 75th business anniversary, Canada-based CAE Inc. has announced to add substantial R&D capacities to his Hungarian operation. The company that develops simulation systems in defense, civil aviation and healthcare will create dozens of new jobs under a nearly HUF 3.5 billion project.

Founded 75 years ago, one of Canada’s largest aviation firms, CAE Inc. has a global presence in some 50 countries and around 180 locations. The company focuses on development and manufacturing of simulation products in civil aviation, defense and security as well as healthcare. Its two Hungarian subsidiaries, CAE Engineering Kft. and CAE Healthcare Kft. located in Budapest and Veszprém, respectively, cover the defense and the medical fields and provide software development services as well as extensive training.
Thanks to the current nearly HUF 3.5 billion project, CAE aims to increase its market share in simulation in the above-mentioned fields. It also intends to hire researchers so that more sophisticated software can support remote training with the help of virtual patients. The cloud-based transformation of products and the application of artificial intelligence also call for recruiting more IT expertise.

CAE is ready to further develop the synthetic environment of its defense industry business line so that students, drivers and pilots and other military staff can execute more detailed and precise exercises and operations on virtual platforms or in real environments simultaneously in multiple locations worldwide. Another purpose is to optimize the operation of CAE training centers by digitalizing the majority of processes.
The company’s ultimate goal with the development is to further revolutionize training of its customers and the implementation of critical operations with the aim of improving security, effectiveness and preparedness.

California-based Alorica Inc., a leader in next-generation customer experience (CX) solutions, lasyt week announced its expansion plans into Africa and Europe through the launch of its operations in Cairo, Egypt and Łódź, Poland. As one of the largest business process outsourcers (BPO) globally with 100,000 employees across 17 countries and 24 years of CX experience—Alorica continues to scale and diversify its best-in-class workforce, now with a presence in these new markets. Setting up operations in Egypt and Poland further enables the digital CX company to meet the growing expectations of multinational companies to deliver industry-leading business outcomes including multilingual customer care, revenue generation, content management & content moderation, tech support and CX consulting. Alorica plans to open for business in both countries during second quarter of this year.
“Growth through Africa and Europe is key to our strategy of offering culturally and linguistically relevant support to well-established and emerging businesses worldwide,” said Greg Haller, Chief Executive Officer at Alorica. “Egypt and Poland have been on our radar as robust commercial markets with a strong talent pipeline. Our new operations will unlock career opportunities for local residents and create a distinct path to extend our solutions to clients in the region.”
With the expansion into Egypt and Poland, Alorica continues its investment into high-growth markets with scalable talent. Its experienced workforce offers CX support in over 30 languages to service brands in high-demand industries ranging from financial services, technology, travel & hospitality to e-commerce and retail among others. With existing operations of 1,000+ employees in Sofia, Bulgaria, the company will continue to leverage its innovative technologies to engage employees and customers through a combination of its work-at-home and on-site programs. 
In Cairo, Alorica’s new contact center is strategically located in Sheikh Zayed City near top private universities, while its site in Łódź, Poland is in the heart of the city near Warsaw—accessible to high-caliber candidates. Both locations are equipped with numerous onsite amenities—accessible transportation, public services, retail stores, and more—while providing maximum efficiency for both brick-and-mortar and work-at-home operations that appeals to a multicultural and multilingual workforce.
Rooted in a people-first foundation, Alorica focuses on employee engagement as a critical driver of performance. The company prides itself on its socially responsible and inclusive work environment, which has resulted in record high employee satisfaction scores. A pioneer in versatile operating models that fosters flexibility, Alorica offers jobs around the globe across state-of the-art contact centers as well as through its work-at-home solution Alorica Anywhere and hybrid Connection Hubs—serving as important channels to link teams for collaboration, training and continuous improvement.
“Leveraging Alorica’s global scale and deep experience, we will provide localized service delivery to companies here in the region, while also enhancing EMEA’s reputation as the top outsourcing destination for customers everywhere,” said Alorica’s EMEA President Matt Sims. “I’m excited to bring Alorica’s mission-driven culture to Egypt and Poland as we hire and develop talented individuals from diverse backgrounds who are passionate about making lives better. As part of our corporate social responsibility, we are committed to not only doing business in the region, but also making an impact through our philanthropic work, people-focused programs and sustainability initiatives, benefiting the communities where our employees live and work. We’re looking forward to creating many jobs in these countries.”
The company continues to receive industry honors for its world-class vision and operational excellence—having been named a Leader in the 2022 Gartner Magic Quadrant for Customer Service BPO for the second consecutive year. Alorica has also garnered recognition as an employer of choice for its purposeful culture and employee engagement, winning awards such as Top Places to Work, Employer of the Year and Best in Biz, while also earning Great Place to Work® certifications for its operations in the Philippines and Guatemala.

Armatis, one of the largest international companies operating in the field of customer service and sales, has officially opened its new office in Gdansk, as previously announced. The company wants to employ over 300 employees in the new location over the next few years. The Tricity branch will become one of the largest outsourcing centres for multilingual customer service and sales in Poland.
Armatis has already been running pilot projects since July this year, in the newly established branch. Yesterday’s official opening of the office was an opportunity for a broader presentation of the company’s plans related to the Tricity. The new office is not only a success for the company itself, but also for Invest in Pomerania, a non-profit local government initiative coordinated by the Pomerania Development Agency, which serves investors in the region.
– Before choosing Gdansk as the new location for our office, we carefully analysed the market and cooperated with Invest in Pomerania. The conclusion was one: this region has enormous potential because of the talent pool. This is shown, for example, by one of Antal’s recent surveys, according to which Gdansk is the second city in Poland where people are most likely to move because of its very good quality of life. This is very important for us, because we plan to employ over 300 people here in the next few years and successively develop our presence on the Tricity market – says Krzysztof Lewinski, CEO of Armatis Polska.
Gdansk office a multilingual hub
The employees of the Gdansk office will be primarily involved in projects carried out for a number of global brands. The services of multilingual service centres are currently in high demand because customers prefer companies that communicate with them in their own language, not in English alone. This is confirmed by research by the European Commission, according to which 82% of consumers are more likely to purchase products if they are offered in their native language. Even their high level of English proficiency does not matter.
– The Tricity – which is a significant academic centre and also attracts a number of young people from other parts of Poland and Europe – gives us access to educated and language-proficient candidates. On this basis, we are building another multilingual hub to satisfy our growth plans – continues Krzysztof Lewiński.
The linguistic potential in the region is also highlighted by Mieczysław Struk, Marshall of the Pomeranian Voivodeship:
– The presence of companies such as Armatis enriches the labour market offer of our region. We have students and graduates of language studies on site, who will have the opportunity to put their knowledge into practice and embark on a career path in the BSS. The multilingual centre serves people from all around the world and employees in Pomerania are perfectly qualified to competently meet the expectations of even the most demanding ones.
Job opportunities for beginners and specialists
Armatis currently employs around 2,000 employees and associates in six offices in Poland. In addition to Gdansk, these include Bielsko-Biala, Katowice, Krakow, Stalowa Wola and Warsaw. The company implements projects for well-known brands from sectors such as banking, tourism, e-commerce, media and telecommunications, and aviation.
– We offer job opportunities for both experienced specialists and people taking their first steps on the labour market. They can count on professional initial training, which provides a wealth of knowledge in the area of customer service and sales, as well as development training during employment. The advantage of working for our company is a clear career path, a competitive salary and additional performance-based bonuses, as well as a number of non-wage benefits. There is also the possibility to work remotely – currently 30% of our people, who prefer this form of professional activity, work in this mode – enumerates Krzysztof Lewiński.

WNS Holdings Limited (WNS), a leading provider of global Business Process Management (BPM) solutions, today announced it has acquired OptiBuy, a leading European provider of procurement platform consulting and implementation solutions. These assets are complementary to WNS’ existing offerings and strengthen the company’s capabilities in both high-end procurement and advanced analytics.

Founded in 2010 and headquartered in Warsaw, Poland, OptiBuy is a leading European provider of procurement platform consulting and implementation solutions. The company helps clients leverage the capabilities of leading 3rd party procurement and supply chain platforms including Ivalua, Jaggaer, and O9, and complements WNS’ existing offerings with platforms such as Coupa and Ariba. In addition, OptiBuy also provides consulting, optimization, outsourcing, and training services to their clients. Currently focused on the EMEA market, the company has approximately 90 employees including more than 40 senior-level certified platform implementation professionals based in Poland. WNS views expansion of these capabilities into the North American market as a significant opportunity. The acquisition of OptiBuy was completed on December 14, 2022. Consideration for the transaction is €30.0 million including up-front payment and expected earn-outs, and excludes adjustments for cash, debt, and working capital. Based on OptiBuy’s revenue generated in calendar 2022, the acquisition is expected to add approximately $2 million to WNS’ net revenue* in fiscal 2023, and to be neutral to WNS’ fiscal 2023 adjusted diluted earnings per share**.
"On behalf of the entire team at OptiBuy, we are excited to become part of WNS and believe that the combination of our two firms will enable the creation of differentiated, end-to-end digital procurement and supply chain solutions for the global marketplace," said Mateusz Borowiecki, Managing Director of OptiBuy. "We look forward to building on the capabilities we have created over the past 12 years and working with the WNS team as we help clients leverage digital technologies to drive long-term business value."

NTT Ltd., a leading infrastructure and services company, announced the deployment of a new digital office in the Krakow headquarters of the HEINEKEN Shared Services Center. Thanks to this implementation, nearly 1,500 employees can experience a hybrid workplace model.HEINEKEN Global Shared Services is an integral part of HEINEKEN, which has been present in Krakow since 2012. The decision to move the company’s financial and operational Shared Services Centers to this location from Malopolska provided an opportunity to reassess the best approach for its campus network needs.
“Our employees around the world belong to 27 different nationalities and speak 17 different languages. Therefore, we are well aware of the important role that effective communication plays in a successful business,” commented Ewa Szalewska, Head of People Function at HEINEKEN. “Following the pandemic, hybrid work has increased, which has affected the way that employees work together and communicate. This is why we decided to create a digital office that will support our team moving forward and allow them to perform their duties, regardless of where they choose to log on from.”
In today’s landscape, such a strategy is still a novelty for many. In fact, according to NTT research [1], 8 out of 10 business representatives believe that supporting remote work is still a challenge for them.
Revolutionizing the HEINEKEN Experience
One of HEINEKEN’s primary goals when modernizing the Poland office was to meet the requirements of a hybrid workplace to attract talented, skilled people from across Europe. Another consideration was the desire to move infrastructure management to a managed services model to enable the relatively small in-house IT team to focus on internal services.
“We needed support in designing the best solutions and choosing the best technologies. We trusted NTT because of their extensive capabilities and numerous partners. We appreciate the dedication and personal commitment of the NTT team, who coordinated many implementations in a very short time frame,” commented Paweł Miodek, D&T Service Delivery Manager at HEINEKEN.
“Throughout the implementation, our NTT team was entrusted with network infrastructure, security and contact centre management, as well as coordination of the entire implementation process,” said Rafał Sałyga, Go-To-Market Director from NTT Ltd. in Poland. “This is also not the end of our partnership, as NTT will also be responsible for a round-the-clock technical centre that will support the employees of the corporation moving forward.”
Migration to the cloud
Following a series of interviews with HEINEKEN employees as well as the architects responsible for arranging the office, it was agreed that a key priority was to transfer the company’s services from its current on-premises model to the cloud; the entire LAN and Contact Centre infrastructure was moved to the managed services model using Cisco solutions.
“Cloud infrastructure is the basis for hybrid work. Without this, it would not be possible to achieve the goals of unified systems and trouble-free and secure access to digital tools and resources from anywhere,” said Łucja Barbaszewska, Head of Sales to the Commercial Market at Cisco Polska. “Cloud gives flexibility, which in turn facilitates productivity and increases employee satisfaction. Using it, all employees, regardless of where they are, can work equally effectively.”
As part of the implementation, the Krakow office also now includes several facilities to collaborate comfortably and creatively, including a system for booking desks, parking spaces, conference rooms and even shelves for belongings. Employees have a preview of who is planning to come into the office on a given day and where they are going to sit, which can be helpful in terms of team collaboration. The data collected via this feature provides valuable feedback for HEINEKEN, as it can be used to monitor which zones of the office are used.
The system is not everything
NTT also partnered with Logitech for hardware solutions dedicated to remote work. The Krakow office now incorporates cameras, audio systems, video terminals and wireless pointing devices to improve the quality of work.
“All employees now use the same interface, regardless of whether they are in the office or at home. This unified system makes business operations simple and trouble-free. The solutions used are modular, which means that we can easily expand and combine them, as well as scale later on,” commented Bartosz Gruza, Manager at Logitech.

Romania's One United Properties [BSE:ONE] said on Monday that it leased 10,500 sq m to Global Business Solutions (GBS), a shared service centre of multinational cigarette company British American Tobacco (BAT).BAT GBS will move its offices from Romania to One Cotroceni Park, a mixed residential development in Bucharest owned by One United Properties, the real estate developer said in a press release.
"The new offices will be structured to facilitate hybrid experiences of connection and work, through new technologies and space design that supports interactivity" said Mario Calero Leyva, general manager for BAT GBS Romania.
BAT is a British multinational manufacturer and distributor of cigarettes, tobacco and other nicotine products. The company is present in more than 175 countries and employs some 52,000 people.
One United Properties is green investor and developer of residential, mixed-use and commercial real estate projects in Bucharest, established in 2007.
The company is listed on the main market of the Bucharest Stock Exchange and currently has a market capitalization of 3.13 billion lei ($675.5 million/636.5 million euro).