Accenture (NYSE: ACN) has agreed to acquire AOX, a German company specializing in embedded software for carmakers and their suppliers. The acquisition will enhance Accenture's capabilities to help automotive clients solve challenges they are facing in their transition to software-defined vehicles.
AOX designs and develops the complex system architectures and high-performance software that increasingly enable and define the performance and features of todays’ vehicles. The company has built a reputation for helping carmakers and suppliers master the shift from traditional software engineering to developing highly integrated scalable architectures. This shift is crucial for carmakers and suppliers to stay competitive, leading to a faster go-to-market strategy, with improved and less fault-prone software features and products.
“Software expertise is becoming the dominating factor in the auto market,” said Christof Horn, who leads the automotive practice of Accenture’s digital engineering and manufacturing service, Industry X, in Europe. “This is where AOX excels. The company’s expertise in high-performance computing, real-time operating systems and the entire software development process makes them an ideal addition to Accenture. The AOX team will become another pillar of the automotive technology powerhouse Accenture has been building over the past years.”
Christina Raab, market unit lead for Accenture in Germany, Austria and Switzerland, added: “Automotive companies are looking for new types of providers that bring deep software architecture expertise and the ability to execute projects across the entire product lifecycle, cost-efficiently and at scale. In combining AOX’s and Accenture’s capabilities we will form a strong player that develops software from the chip to the cloud, covering the complete life cycle from architecture design to maintenance. This acquisition demonstrates our commitment to build long-lasting strategic relationships with our clients and support them along the complex Automotive Software value chain.”
AOX’s clients are major German car manufacturers and large automotive suppliers. The company is headquartered in Villingen-Schwenningen, Germany, and has offices in Karlsruhe, Rosenheim, and Wetzlar. Its team of more than 50 highly skilled professionals will become part of Accenture’s Industry X engineering team.
Rainer Oder, co-founder and CEO of AOX, commented: “As part of Accenture, we can create exciting new opportunities for our employees and provide the expertise and talent our clients need for major transformation projects. This will help them tackle complex software challenges in the concept phase of products and drive innovation throughout the entire lifecycle. Accenture’s scale and service portfolio will enable us to deliver software solutions to clients globally in the automotive industry and other embedded software-heavy sectors such as medical technology.”
Terms of the transaction were not disclosed. Completion of the acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions.
