About a year ago, French IT giant Atos announced that it was exploring plans to split itself down the middle, separating its computing infrastructure business – which remains under the “Atos” brand – and a services-oriented spinoff focused on digital transformation, big data and cybersecurity. That spinoff, initially known as Evidian, launched this week as “Eviden” – a name that retains the same etymology (“evidence”) without being a near-anagram of “Nvidia.”
Eviden’s hot-off-the-presses website promises global leadership in “data-driven, trusted and sustainable digital transformation” based on strong positions in “digital, cloud, data, advanced computing and security.” In that advanced computing space, Eviden will deliver solutions around AI for HPC; edge computing; computer vision; HPCaaS; simulation; “next-gen” HPC; and more. Target industries: energy and utilities; financial services and insurance; healthcare and life sciences; manufacturing; public sector and defense; retail; transport and logistics; and telecom and media.
Billing itself as “one of the largest carve-outs our industry has ever seen,” Eviden is boasting 57,000 employees (more than half of the 111,000 listed on Atos’ website, in line with the plans for a split down the middle) as well as 2,100 patents and €5 billion (~$5.48 billion USD) in revenue last year – which, again, is about half of Atos’ advertised revenues of €11 billion.
As an important note, the Eviden-affiliated segments of Atos’ business have exhibited much better health than the now-Atos-affiliated segments in recent years: when the split was proposed, Atos cited organic growth of +5% for the Eviden segments and an organic decline of -12% for the “Atos” segments. In an early speed bump for the new brand, though, Airbus confirmed just a week ago that it would not pursue its acquisition of a minority stake in Eviden; discussions around that possible stake had been initiated just a month or two prior.
An industry insider told HPCwire that the split makes sense, as Atos’ long-term, expensive investments in the HPC space and its strong hardware division were being negatively impacted by the financial performance of its services segment. Under the new direction, each side gets renewed focus and attention. IBM pulled a similar move a couple years ago when its IT infrastructure services segments split off from the main company as Kyndryl, and the insider also cited HP and HPE as a comparably sensible – and successful – division.
Eviden’s new CEO for business in Northern Europe and APAC is Nikki Kelly, who most recently served as Atos’ SVP for public sector and defense in Northern Europe for around three years.
“I’m excited to start my new role with Eviden[,] an Atos business, as the CEO for Northern Europe & APAC,” Kelly wrote on LinkedIn. “A once in a lifetime opportunity to help scale a €5bn new company with deep Industry expertise, innovation in our DNA, helping our clients to be competitive and deliver secure, digital business solutions quickly at scale.”
As its first press releases, Eviden today announced an “evolution” of its digital identity management products “so that they will be ready for the post-quantum era” and, in a separate release, announced that its Trustway Proteccio hardware security module would “soon support post-quantum algorithms.”
While Eviden’s brand has now formally launched, it remains “an Atos business,” as the split has not fully gone through. Last October, Atos told Reuters that it anticipated the split to complete “effective at the earliest on July 1, 2023, and at the latest on December 31, 2023.”
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