Xerox buys IT services provider
September 28, 2009 by Sam NarisiPosted in: Dealers & Channel, In this week's e-newsletter, Latest News & Views
Xerox has made a big move to expand its involvement in so-called “business process outsourcing.”
Copier/printer maker Xerox Corporation announced that it would buy Dallas-based Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) in a $6.4 billion deal. ACS specializes in managing and providing services to IT operations, including those of international corporations and more than 1,700 federal, state, and local governments. The trendy term for what ACS does is “business process outsourcing.”
That’s an area in which Xerox has a growing presence, to the tune of $3 billion a year –- a figure that will be tripled by the acquisition. Indeed, the future of all companies in the copier/printer industry has been to depend less on the diminishing returns from selling “boxes” and work more on selling “solutions,” that is document management and workflows. The move is likely to give Xerox more access to large IT departments where it has been at a disadvantage to heavily entrenched Hewlett-Packard.
The acquisition, Xerox’s largest ever, will more than double its size. It’s also a big risk, one that will add considerably to Xerox’s debt.
But there is some sense that survival may depend on taking such risks. The move is seen as a reaction to two big recent deals: Dell bought IT services company Perot Systems for $3.9 billion last month. HP last year acquired Electronic Data Systems Corp. for $13.2 billion.
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Tags: ACS, Affiliated Computer Services, Xerox
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