Accenture plans to spend roughly $4 billion on acquisitions during the current fiscal year, the global IT consulting company indicated during a quarterly earnings call on March 17, 2022.
Roughly $1.8 billion of that $4 billion M&A budget has already been spent on 21 acquisitions during the first half of Accenture's fiscal year 2022, CFO KC McClure indicated.
Accenture Acquisitions, Growing Demand for Managed Security Services
The current M&A budget reflects Accenture's extensive experience buying IT consulting firms and software developers that specialize in cloud services, cybersecurity, digital transformation, data and analytics, managed services, and ad agencies. Of the 100-plus Accenture acquisitions since 2019, dozens were MSPs and a handful were MSSPs, according to ChannelE2E's M&A market coverage.
During the March 2022 earnings call, Accenture CEO Julie Sweet emphasized growing demand for the company's managed IT and many security services. She said two trends are driving the demand.
"One, is it's faster to digitize because use our platforms. And the second is the access to hard-to-get talent, right? And so let's just take security. We have 10,000 security professionals who do everything from threat assessment to the rebuilding and designing platforms to managed services. And in today's world, with the security landscape broadening, that access to that kind of talent is incredible."
Accenture Cybersecurity Training for Ukraine Refugees
Amid Russia's invasion of the Ukraine, Accenture has ended its business in Russia and continues to explore ways to help the Ukraine refugees. In Poland, for example the company is piloting the first addition of an Accenture Academy for women refugees from Ukraine to build their technology skills starting in cybersecurity, Sweet noted.
Meanwhile, Accenture's overall business performance appears strong. Revenue was $15 billion in Q2 of fiscal 2022, up 24 percent from Q2 of fiscal 2021, the company indicated in the March 17, 2022 earnings release.
