SAIC announces acquisition of Unisys Federal for USD 1.2 billion

	The deal marks as the second-largest procurement by SAIC in recent times when it purchased Engility- another large contractor for a total valuation of USD 2.5 billion. 
	The Unisys purchase will add an additional 2,000 employees to SAIC.
	 


In a transaction that will expand SAIC’s government IT business, the North Virginia based firm aims at acquiring Unisys – a publicly-traded IT firm for USD 1.2 billion. According to Nazzic Keene, Chief Executive at SAIC, the deal points at a broader strategy to position the company as a prominent cloud migration service provider for the federal government, a line of business that comprises of moving old computer systems into technologically advanced cloud-based models.

For the record, the Defense Department primarily relied on local computer network systems for decades that are established by individual agencies. It has often led to disorganization; the patchwork collection of the computing systems has often been walled off from one another.

Such an approach may hamper the sharing of confidential intelligence data and reduce the chances of deploying innovative and advanced technologies.  

Apparently, the ‘digital modernization strategy’ – a recently established program by the department requires a broader prospect towards the IT assets in which technologies that are segmented as foundational are common across the services. Cloud computing is thus regarded as a novel concept towards the use of AI.

The commercial technology entities are providing cloud storage solutions with leading companies like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft locked into a competitive fight to become the service provider to the Defense Department.

Claims are made that the Unisys purchase will lead to an addition of 2,000 employees to SAIC, of which close to 75% of the employees hold high-level certifications in fields that SAIC is interested in. The combined firm employs following this will reach over 25,000 people making it one of the largest IT providers to the federal government.

Reportedly, SAIC have also received a contract from the Air Force last month, valuing close to USD 727 million in order to transfer 800 service applications onto the cloud.  

Source Credits: https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2020/02/06/saic-will-pay-12-billion-acquire-unisys-federal/