Atos – A French IT Company Formed By A Series Of Mergers In The Late 90s.
Atos is a famous French multinational IT conglomerate. Though the company officially launched in 2000, the history of its origin dates back to the late 90s. The company’s headquarters is based in Bezons, France. The main products of the company are IT services and consulting which includes cloud platforms, cybersecurity services, big data, unified communications, etc. Atos provides services on a global scale to multiple industries like financial services and insurance, healthcare & life science, manufacturing, public sector and defense, telecommunication and media, logistics, etc. The founder of the company is Bernard Bourigeaud and the present CEO is Elie Girard.
The Founding Story of Atos
The story of Atos dates back to 1996 when a company called Origin B.V. was founded by the merger of two companies. The two companies are Philips Communication & Processing division and BSO, a Dutch company. In 1997, the company was established as a result of a merger between Axime and Sligos, both French companies. In 2000, another merger took place between Atos and Origin B.V., and together they formed Atos Origin.
Early Years, Acquisitions, and Spin-Offs
In 2001, the company sold one of its divisions (Nordic Operations) to WM-data. In the subsequent years, Atos made big acquisitions by acquiring KPMG Consulting (in the UK and Netherlands). In 2004, the company acquired SchlumbergerSema (IT division of Schlumberger) and Itellium (only the infrastructure division). In 2004, the company also created a new subsidiary called Atos Worldline and made the Atos Consulting division more pronounced. The part of the company that originated from the Philips C&P during the early merger was sold to Fujitsu. The company has business across various continents but in 2005 and 2006 the company sold its part of Nordic and the Middle East business.
Bernard Bourigeaud, after founding the company, also played the role of its CEO till 2007. He was replaced by Philippe Germond in that year but again in 2008, Philippe was replaced by Thierry Breton. After a couple of years, the company acquired Venture Infotek, an Indian payment company, and expanded its business into the Indian market. Later in 2010, the company acquired the IT Services subsidiary of Siemens for €850 million. In 2014, Atos bought a controlling stake in Bull SA and Xeros’s IT Outsourcing business. The latter acquisition tripled the size of the company in the North American market. Atos, in 2018, went into a partnership with Google Cloud to offer secure AI systems. In July 2021, the company announced the acquisition of Visual BI, a leading company that exclusively focuses on Cloud Data Analytics and Business Intelligence.
Atos in Fighting COVID-19
Atos gathered all its technology and innovation resources to fight the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic last year. It supported the scientific community with its computing power and helped in accelerating vaccine research. Last year, to help the local authorities contain the spread of the virus, Atos created EpiSYS. It is an epidemic management system (EMS) that was built to store and manage all patient data and give healthcare professionals a view of the present epidemiological situation on a real-time basis. Company high-performing supercomputers were also put at work to support the European research teams with large computing resources. The company is also involved in data science projects which is more like a challenge launched by the White House to answer questions regarding the COVID-19 using data science tools.
About the Founder
Bernard Bourigeaud has done more than just founding Atos. He is also the founder of Axime, one of the leading IT services and payment companies in the world. Bernard founded Atos seven years after founding Axime and stayed as the CEO of the former. When he stepped down from Atos Origin, the company generated annual revenue of more than $5 billion and operated in more than 50 countries. Before he became an entrepreneur, he worked at Deloitte and Haskins & Sells for many years. He studied economics and management and is a qualified Chartered Accountant.
Annasha Dey is an NIT student, who apart from studying engineering is also a content writer. She has a great interest in photography, writing, reading novels, and travelling as well. She is a foodie who loves socializing and hanging out with her friends. She is also a trained Kathak dancer and a big fashion enthusiast. Dey also loves watching TV series, which includes F.R.I.E.N.D.S. and Big Bang Theory. To be a better writer she prefers to read more