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Deloitte is Betting Big on AI and Cybersecurity
Understanding each System Integrator’s (SIs) strategy and overall strengths will help you select the SI that will best meet your needs. Here we will look at how Deloitte is currently positioning themselves and what customers could expect from them moving forward.
Acquisitions Expand Cybersecurity and AI Capabilities
Like many other tier 1 SIs, acquisitions are one way Deloitte works to stay competitive and offer clients best-in-class services to meet their needs. In the past couple of years, Deloitte has strengthened its international presence and expanded on its capabilities by acquiring several companies from different countries.
Some of Deloitte’s recent acquisitions include:
- January 2020: Secure Path, a Malaysian cybersecurity consulting firm.
- March 2020: Zimbani, an Australian cybersecurity firm.
- April 2020: AccelTeam, a Malaysian consulting firm that specializes in data-driven analytics, location intelligence, machine learning, enterprise data warehouse automation and converged big data platform solutions.
- June 2020: DNM, a leading Irish cloud services provider and MSP for AWS integrations.
- August 2020: Keytree, an SAP cloud partner and international MSP, headquartered in the UK with offices in India, Spain, Australia, and Canada.
- January 2021: Deloitte’s subsidiary, Deloitte & Touche, acquired Root9B (R9B), an American cybersecurity training company that also provides cybersecurity products and services.
- January 2021: Focus IT, an Oracle consultancy in the Philippines.
Some key themes became apparent when examining Deloitte’s recent M&A activity. Overall, there is a major shift in focus to cloud-based consulting, cybersecurity analytics and artificial intelligence (AI).
Specifically, Deloitte is expanding their global delivery footprint along with its SAP and Oracle Cloud transformation capabilities with their acquisitions of Keytree and Focus IT. Keytree will create the largest SAP-enabled transformation practice in the UK and one of the largest in Europe, whereas the Focus IT acquisition will strengthen Deloitte’s Oracle Cloud solution offerings for their clients across Southeast Asia. These investments fortify Deloitte’s SAP and Oracle capabilities as a consistently strong SI transformation partner and an equally capable consulting partner when paired with hyperscalers and cloud computing services such as Microsoft Azure, SAP Rise, and Oracle Cloud.
Their recent acquisitions of Secure Path, Zimbini, and R9B strengthen their global footprint in the cybersecurity sector. Additionally, the purchase of R9B contributed to its catalog of products and services with Orkos, an assessment and remediation tool that offers a cost-effective way to manage and reduce risk without adding complexity to a security stack. Orkos is said to have reduced insider and external threat risks that would leverage weak or stolen credentials to compromise information technology networks.
Overall, Deloitte has taken great strides to expand their service offerings while gaining credibility to be considered as a global presence across all angles, from consulting to security to AI.
Deloitte Launched New AI Centers and a Subscription Service for AI
In addition to bolstering its AI capabilities through acquisitions such as AccelTeam, Deloitte cemented its dedication to AI by announcing the launch of multiple AI institutes and centers in a single month. In March 2021, they announced the launch of the Deloitte AI Institute in Canada, the Deloitte Artificial Intelligence Institute for Government (DAIIG) and the Deloitte Center for AI in partnership with NVIDIA.
In April of 2021, Deloitte announced its ReadyAI™ Artificial Intelligence-as-a-Service Solution, which offers a comprehensive suite of capabilities including data preparation, advanced analytics, machine learning and deployment of machine learning insights, visualization, and model management.
The AI market represents a huge opportunity for SIs and major cloud vendors as it is expected to exceed $191 billion by 2024, growing at a 37% compound annual growth rate. With their new AI-as-a-Service offering and dedicated AI centers, Deloitte is signaling that they are a serious option for clients who are looking to enhance and accelerate their digital transformations by tapping into the power of AI.
In the historically human-driven management consulting sector, AI and automation are revolutionizing the way management consultants explore data. AI and automation help management consultants handle practices such as processing and analyzing massive amounts of data more efficiently and faster. It can also provide insights into areas of businesses such as sales, operations, supply chain, human capital management, and more. This information can be used to help consultants identify new opportunities and develop effective strategies for growth.
Key Takeaways for Customers
Don’t be surprised if Deloitte comes to the table with paired solution offerings as you address your ERP transformations directly with your software provider or when you reach out for cloud hosting with GCP, AWS or Azure.
Potential and current Deloitte customers can expect Deloitte to push new AI capabilities and offerings such as ReadyAI. But since Deloitte’s recent AI acquisitions and investments are still so new, it will take time to fully integrate the new capabilities they’ve acquired.
If you’re considering Deloitte’s AI solutions (or any other provider’s), we recommend doing your due diligence to understand its current capabilities and what kind of value they would bring to your business in particular. Though it is still new, it would be worth asking Deloitte to share examples or case studies of some successful AI integrations to help you assess the level of maturity of their solutions and what type of benefits it has already provided.
As you assess your options, consider questions such as:
- How will a large investment in AI pay off for our business? Will it give us a clear advantage over our competitors?
- Could Deloitte’s AI capabilities potentially reduce our staffing requirements on projects?
- Will the AI solution reduce our integration timelines? If so, by how much?
- How can we hold Deloitte accountable for providing the promised value of these new AI solutions?
It’s always important to ensure you have a clearly defined roadmap and vision for your transformation efforts and business needs. Since AI and automation introduce new opportunities, you may have to ask more questions of your SI providers to make the most of your potential investments.
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