Index Insider: Mega Award Impact Continues to Wane

Friday, July 29, 2022

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Hello. This is Stanton Jones with your weekly briefing on what’s important in IT and business services.
 
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CONTRACTING INTELLIGENCE

No topic in our industry stirs more discussion – and debate – than mega deals. Awards over $100 million in ACV typically take a long time to get over the line, but once they do, they can provide a significant multi-year revenue stream for the provider and be a catalyst for major technology transformation and standardization for the client.
 
So let’s recap the mega award results from the second quarter: There were nine awards – that’s the most since the second quarter of 2019. The total ACV of these awards was over $1 billion – the third time in four quarters that has happened (see Data Watch).
 
Also of note was the fact that seven of the nine awards were new scope. That makes 2Q22 the biggest quarter for new scope mega awards in over a decade.
 
So do these recent results indicate a sea change in the market for mega awards? We don’t think so. Ten years ago, mega awards made up over 20% of the ACV in the market. As you can see from the Data Watch chart, it’s now hovering around 15%. So not only is the total ACV generated by mega awards coming down, their overall impact is waning as well.
 
On the other side of the coin, recall that over 85% of the ACV in the market is under $20 million in ACV. That’s a sustained trend we have seen for many quarters now as enterprises continue to favor smaller, shorter awards.

DATA WATCH

Number of Mega Awards Jumped in 2Q22, but Overall ACV Impact Continues to Wane

M&A

  • Sopra Steria plans to acquire majority stake in cybersecurity and defense systems integrator CS GROUP (link).
  • Accenture acquires Canadian ServiceNow, Microsoft and SAP specialist Solvera Solutions (link).
  • Exadel acquires European remote work platform Motion Software (link).
  • TietoEVRY evaluating a spinoff of its banking business (link).
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About the author

Stanton Jones

Stanton Jones

Stanton leads ISG's Index research, helping providers, investors and ISG clients make sense of the global IT services sector. Stanton’s weekly newsletter, the Index Insider, is read by thousands of market stakeholders each week. An ISG Digital Fellow, Stanton has been quoted in Fast Company, Forbes and CIO.com, and has appeared on national cable news.