Cognizant Technology Solutions:
Lakshmi Narayanan rings NASDAQ opening bell
Cognizant Chennai facility TCO
Cognizant Technology Solutions (NASDAQ: CTSH) is an information technology services company with headquarters in Teaneck, New Jersey, United States and with significant operations in Chennai, India.
Cognizant has been named to the 2007 Fortune 100 Fastest-Growing Companies List for the fifth consecutive year, making it the only company receiving the “Five-year all-stars” distinction in 2007’s list.[2]
Cognizant has also been named in the top 10 of Business Week’s Hot Growth Technology Companies. Cognizant was ranked 6th overall. It was the #1 ranked IT services Company in the list.
[edit] History
The company was started in 1994, as an in-house IT services unit of the Dun & Bradstreet Corporation (D&B) and its operating units. Initially a joint venture between Dun & Bradstreet (76%) and Satyam Computer Services Ltd. (24%), it soon became a 100% subsidiary of D&B Corp. In 1996, the company became a division of the Cognizant Corporation, after the split-up of Dun & Bradstreet Corporation.
In June 1998, Cognizant Corporation was again split into independent companies, and Cognizant Technology Solutions was formed as a division of IMS Health, a provider of information solutions to the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries. The same year, the company completed its initial public offering and was listed on the NASDAQ. In November 2002, IMS Health divested its majority interest in Cognizant through a tax-free split-off.
In its early years, Cognizant's clientele primarily comprised the sister companies in the Dun and Bradstreet group of companies and the services were focused on Y2K compliance, Application Support and Maintenance (predominantly in client server and mainframe applications). With the turn of the new millennium, Cognizant successfully expanded it's client base to Fortune 500 customers in Financial Services, Healthcare, Information, Media and Entertainment, Retail and Manufacturing and diversified it's services to new technologies and internet based applications. The company currently serves over 500 customers across 9 industry verticals.
The company has been one of the fastest growing in the IT Services segment being the fastest among global IT Services companies to cross $1Bn as revenues. Along the way, it has recorded significant recognition by analysts becoming a member of the prestigious NASDAQ-100 and S&P500 Index among other accolades.
[edit] Operations
Even though it is headquartered in New Jersey, USA, most of Cognizant Technology Solutions' employees are based in India. It has offices in Chennai, Bangalore, Coimbatore, Hyderabad, Kolkata, Mumbai, Pune, Gurgaon and Kochi and development centres in Shanghai, Buenos Aires and Amsterdam. Cognizant has over 55,000 employees. It became the first company in the world to be certified for CMMI-Level5 per the latest model.[1]
Cognizant has aligned its businesses vertically and has clients in
In addition to vertical focus, Cognizant also provides specialty technology services through its horizontal expertise such as Data Warehousing and Business Intelligence, CRM, ERP, ITIS, BPO etc.
[edit] Financial Health
Cognizant's revenue for the fourth quarter of year 2006 is up 65 per cent from $256.9 million for the corresponding quarter the previous year to $424.4 million, and the company ended the year 2006 with $1.424 billion in revenue. During this quarter the company added a net total of almost 4,500 employees and more than 50,000 employees in 2006 overall. The company has a debt free balance sheet. Its income has seen a compounded 40% annual growth in the last few years. For the five years ended Dec. 31, 2006, CTSH has grown its revenue by an average of 58.1% every year.[3]
After the close of trading on November 16, 2006 Cognizant moved from the mid cap S&P 400 to the S&P 500. On March 5th 2007 Cognizant became first American company to ring the NASDAQ opening bell remotely, from the Company's Chennai, India techno-complex.
[edit] Competition
Its primary competitors are Infosys and other IT services companies such as Accenture, Computer Sciences Corporation,Perot Systems, Satyam, Siemens IT Solutions and Services, Wipro, Aricent,HCL Technologies and Tata Consultancy Services.
[edit] Recent News
- Cognizant to Acquire marketRx, A Leading Provider Of Life Sciences Market Analytics for $135million.[4]
- Deutsche Telekom's enterprise customer division, T-Systems, and global IT services provider, Cognizant (NASDAQ: CTSH), have entered into a truly global Systems Integration alliance.[5]
[edit] References
[edit] External links
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