In June 2024, Devoteam announced the acquisition of Ubertas Consulting, a leading UK-based AWS consultancy. The move strengthened Devoteam’s presence across the United Kingdom and Ireland, expanding its reach to deliver exceptional services in cloud, data, cybersecurity and artificial intelligence to a client base across industries and public institutions.
The strategic and targeted acquisition created Devoteam UK, an integrated organisation that is positioned to scale and meet the rising demand for AWS solutions across the EMEA region, empowering businesses to achieve their digital transformation goals. It reflects Devoteam’s growth trajectory and commitment to deliver unparalleled Cloud solutions and provide enhanced customer value through expanded knowledge and deep industry expertise.
The Ubertas Consulting acquisition has been the latest in a number of high profile acquisitions from 2017 to 2024 as Devoteam expands its services and geographic footprint. Globally, the company has also developed key strategic partnerships with not only AWS, but Google Cloud, Microsoft and ServiceNow alongside a broader ecosystem of partners, as it continues to offer tailored and specialised services to each.
The strategic partnership announcement with ServiceNow demonstrated even more growth plans across the EMEA region and followed the acquisition of Eraneos in the Netherlands last year. Stanislas de Bentzmann, founder and CEO of Devoteam, recently attended the AWS Summit in London with an objective to reinforce Devoteam’s knowledge and understanding of the latest innovations in the cloud computing space.
Speaking at the recent launch of Devoteam UK, Bentzmann discussed the company’s strategic plans, partnerships and hopes for further growth across Europe despite wavering support from the United States:
“Some things we cannot disclose yet; however, we can share that we are in the ongoing process of developing our footprint in the EMEA region to support our customers there in the best way possible, which involves concentrating talent density.
We have plans to reinforce our talent pool with a strong management team, similar to what we’ve achieved here in the UK by bringing Ubertas Consulting into Devoteam. We seek strong expertise with in-depth AWS knowledge to solidify our presence with the highest level of expertise in the market, as we have achieved by merging AWS and ServiceNow with Devoteam, consistently expanding to service our clients optimally.
We are organised to support our strategic partnerships with four of the well known tech providers (Microsoft, ServiceNow, AWS and Google). We see NVIDIA as our fifth partner shortly. We then focus on these five strategic partners, all of whom are experts with a strong and reputable presence in their respective markets. They all possess the necessary know-how and are well-positioned for expansion.
More importantly, each partner will leave with a comprehensive understanding of each other's expertise and capabilities. We will adapt, bond, and understand our strengths to address the market better than ever before.
The goal is that the five teams come together as one united force with greater capabilities. A melting pot of diverse expertise and know-how from different regions, where each of the five was already a dominant force.
We have combined Google, AWS, and ServiceNow in the UK. We are now developing AWS and ServiceNow as a combined force that we can heavily promote and achieve great success with. DataBricks is another layer that is very strong. They possess exceptional data management skills, combined with cloud capabilities, to deliver the most optimal data to AI tools.”
Much of the talk at AWS Summit centered around how Microsoft vowed to protect its European operations, even if U.S. President Donald Trump tries to block the continent from using its cloud services.
A bullish Bentzmann said that the situation brought on by the Trump administration demonstrates that UK and European companies must acknowledge more complexities in the immediate future:
“The U.S. cloud is the leading cloud in Europe. Due to the differences in the Chinese cloud, Europeans have been more trusting of the U.S. cloud so far. Even if we were a little surprised and uncomfortable with the Patriot Act signed by President Trump during his first term, we trust the U.S. tech and the U.S. Cloud. And that's what you can see, that the Chinese cloud is so small. There is now a growing awareness that we should be more cautious, as we can see that it's a risk we may not have fully appreciated over the last few years.
We see two kinds of sovereign clouds. The one like Thales with a product called S3NS in this larger organization. They are building a cloud solution on Google technology, but run by Thales data centers. So, it's Google technology run by a European organisation, and it's secured in that way so that nobody can access customers’ data. So that's one answer. There is another one, run by Microsoft, called Cloud for Sovereignty, which gives access keys to the data only to the customers.
However, this might not be entirely comfortable for customers, as technology provides robust security. However, they still doubt what will happen in the event of a conflict between Microsoft and the customer.
So that's a second option. The third one is that you can see complete local solutions such as OVHcloud and Numspot emerging on the market. Are they sufficiently innovative? The answer is so far no, they are not a solution. We have some in France and in Germany, but they don’t invest enough in technology, and innovation is limited due to limited means.
This adds complexity for the customers. For a company like Devoteam, complexity means customers are looking for advisors like ourselves. So, the fact that we are talking with our large customers about not moving to the U.S. cloud anymore, but instead splitting or dividing up what you need to keep, and how you can build your own private cloud, or go to a sovereign cloud, which means they will need us because all this dimension implies additional complexity, and that's good for business.
And the question is everywhere on the table, in all geographies, in all countries. In European countries. And not only in Europe, but also in the Middle East.”
Despite this, Bentzmann does see positives emerging with support from established and new companies.
“You know that when something becomes more expensive, more space is created for newcomers. I believe it's a plus, and I also don’t think Microsoft, Google, or Amazon want to lose their European customers. No, that's not a game they want to play. On the contrary, they are in the game to increase their market share.”
