Singapore-based NCS has bought Australia’s largest privately-owned information technology (IT) services company, The Dialog Group, for A$325 million ($236 million).
The acquisition combines Dialog’s core IT capabilities and NCS’s digital services to bolster its focus on innovation, cloud, artificial intelligence and data analytics, NCS said.
The Australian IT consulting group has offices in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne, Canberra, Perth, Darwin and Adelaide.
“This acquisition is a significant step in the regionalisation of NCS,” Ng Kuo Pin, NCS chief executive, said.
“The scale of this acquisition, our largest to date, reflects our firm commitment to growing our business beyond the shores of Singapore,” he added.
NCS is a subsidiary of Singtel Group, and Ng said Australia is where NCS can also leverage the strategic presence of the Singtel Group.
Ng said the deal trebles the number of IT specialists in its operations in Australia to 1,300.
The company works in sectors including government, healthcare, transport, communications, financial and commercial services.
NCS has been scaling up its presence in Australia since December 2020 to serve clients in Australia through NCS NEXT, its digital innovation and services arm.
This latest deal follows NCS’s acquisition in Australia of Riley, a cloud consultancy with dedicated expertise in Google cloud applications, and Eighty20 Solutions, a cloud transformation specialist.
According to Gartner, IT spending in Australia is showing its strongest growth in a decade and is projected to grow 6.5% in 2022.
The largest IT spending segment in Australia is IT services, which is expected to grow to A$39 billion in 2022.
- George Russell
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