Cognizant invests in IIoT with Bright Wolf acquisition
Cognizant is set to acquire Bright Wolf and as a result extend its Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) offerings for enterprise companies.
Bright Wolf is a privately-held technology services provider specialising in custom Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) solutions. The company is certified by all major cloud providers and an expert in IoT.
Bright Wolf is also a Microsoft Gold Partner and has been named an Amazon Web Services Advanced Technology Partner, IoT Competency.
With the close of the acquisition, Cognizant will establish its newest IoT innovation lab in the Raleigh-Durham, N.C., Research Triangle, with the Bright Wolf team as its core, the company states.
The transaction is expected to close in the fourth quarter of 2020, subject to the satisfaction of closing conditions. Financial details were not disclosed.
Specifically, Bright Wolf will extend Cognizant's smart products offering and expertise in architecting and implementing IIoT solutions.
This includes design consulting, development, and digital transformation services for clients such as Caterpillar and ITW Hartness in manufacturing, energy, transportation, water, healthcare, and agriculture, among other industries.
For example, Bright Wolf recently introduced a solution for automation of cold chain transportation and refrigeration assets for a large logistics company.
Bright Wolf's specific expertise, centered on asset performance management, predictive maintenance, and yield optimisation, includes connecting industrial equipment, optimising industrial operations, integrating enterprise data and leveraging proprietary accelerators for IIoT.
On connecting equipment, Bright Wolf technology transforms manufacturing machinery into connected assets and systems for new data-driven services, predictive maintenance, and customer value.
To optimise operations, the solutions focus on automating manufacturing, supply chain, and energy operations while modernising legacy controls, human machine interface, and historians with a more intelligent edge, including analytics, AI, and secure cloud connectivity.
Integrating enterprise data results in improving data visibility and operational insights to deliver better performance across multi-site machinery, Enterprise Resource Planning, and Customer Relationship Management systems, as well as complex business workflow integrations.
Finally, to enhance IIoT Deployments, Bright Wolf increases the time-to-value of industrial data with Springboard Cloud Services, connecting equipment to the cloud faster with Gearbox Edge Suite, and managing fleets at scale with GearBox Device Manager.
Cognizant president of digital business, Malcolm Frank, says, "Combining Bright Wolf's experience in production-class IIoT deployments with Cognizant's expertise in foundational IIoT technologies will increase our clients' resiliency, operational efficiency, and competitive advantage.
"Companies are increasingly embracing IIoT, and Bright Wolf's team of senior IIoT architects have delivered the business value others have struggled to achieve. We look forward to this talented team joining Cognizant.
Bright Wolf chief executive officer Peter Bourne says, "IIoT transformation can be a complex, high-stakes undertaking for any business.
"Bright Wolf has helped leading companies across industries realise their IIoT vision through our Zero Waste Engineering approach.
"We help ensure clients make the right investments at the right time and have the ability to scale as dictated by business and market needs.
"Our unique capabilities, together with Cognizant's deep vertical industry knowledge, scale, and expertise in predictive analytics, AI, cloud, and IoT, will provide clients with an unparalleled partner on their IIoT journey.
Bright Wolf will mark Cognizant's eighth acquisition to date in 2020 to accelerate growth in the company's focus areas of cloud, AI and analytics, software product engineering, and IoT.
