Cognizant Buys Inawisdom

December 30, 2020

Cognizant has acquired Inawisdom, a UK-based, privately-held consultancy specializing in artificial intelligence, machine learning, and data analytics to help businesses make better, faster decisions that improve business outcomes. Inawisdom focuses on delivering cloud-native, full-stack solutions leveraging proven consulting methodologies and an analytics and machine learning platform built using Amazon Web Services (AWS). Financial details were not disclosed.

Inawisdom marks Cognizant's ninth acquisition in 2020 to expand capabilities for clients globally in the key focus areas of data and artificial intelligence, cloud, digital engineering, and Internet of Things. Cognizant has invested more than $1.1 billion this year alone for acquisitions in these areas.

"Businesses succeed or fail by the speed and quality of their decisions, ­and the best business decisions are informed by data and AI," said Malcolm Frank, President, Digital Business, Cognizant. "We are pleased to welcome Inawisdom's skilled team to Cognizant and further accelerate our innovation on data modernization and intelligent decision-making. Cognizant and Inawisdom's clients will benefit from our shared, deep relationships with AWS and our combined expertise with AI, machine learning, cloud, and data analytics."

"As a committed and proven expert in AI and machine learning, we are excited to join Cognizant and build on Inawisdom's unique combination of accelerators and skills," said Neil Miles, CEO, Inawisdom. "Our combined strength will further support customers in embedding data-driven decision-making into their organization, increasing their speed to business value and long-term market differentiation. Being part of Cognizant provides access to a wider, global network of AI and machine learning professionals, and a wealth of new capabilities that will expand our joint service offerings for successful data transformation."

Inawisdom has developed the Rapid Analytics and Machine Learning Platform (RAMP), based on AWS cloud technology, to provide a continually evolving and reusable code repository and accelerate AI-driven business outcomes. Using RAMP, coupled with its own Agile consulting approach, Inawisdom helps clients across multiple use cases from enhancing supply chain efficiency to improving customer service and reducing operating costs, often achieving results within weeks. Inawisdom's clients include businesses in a broad range of industry sectors throughout Europe and the Middle East.

"AWS empowers millions of customers around the world to lower costs, become more agile, and innovate faster," said Doug Yeum, Head of Global Partner Organization, Amazon Web Services, Inc. "Organizations look to AWS partners like Cognizant and Inawisdom to help transform their data and analytics capabilities using AWS services. Cognizant and Inawisdom joining forces is a win for our customers, and we look forward to the industry and data science capabilities the Cognizant team will be able to offer our customers."

Founded in 2016, Inawisdom has operations in the UK and the Netherlands. Through the acquisition, Inawisdom will join with Contino, another company in Cognizant's Digital Business group, to provide end-to-end cloud-native AI and machine learning solutions. London-based Contino, acquired by Cognizant in 2019, specializes in helping clients accelerate their transition to modern digital businesses with enterprise DevOps methodologies, a cloud-native development approach, and advanced data platforms.

Inawisdom is an AWS Premier Consulting Partner recognized by AWS for its machine learning and data and analytics expertise, and for helping clients drive innovation and build solutions on the AWS platform. AWS named Inawisdom as APN Machine Learning Partner of the Year 2020 and APN Differentiation Partner of the Year 2019 in Europe.

Cognizant's AWS Business Group is one of the largest AWS-certified practitioner communities in the world. With more than 8,000 certified cloud professionals supporting clients, Cognizant is recognized for its expertise in hyperscale cloud strategy and implementation, including being cited as a Leader in Gartner's 2020 Magic Quadrant for Public Cloud Infrastructure Professional and Managed Services, Worldwide.