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IT services major Cognizant, which expects to earn $500 million this year from social, mobility, cloud and analytics (SMAC) technologies, said the growth in this area has been better than expected.
Cognizant Technology's CFO Karen McLoughlin during the 2013 Credit Suisse Annual Tech Conference last week said the firm is getting a good reception in the marketplace to some of the SMAC solutions that it has build for certain industries and its clients.
"We are seeing great traction out of our SMAC Stack for social, mobility, analytics and cloud. And as you mentioned earlier in the year, we talked about that business was on track to do $500 million this year and we are still on track to do that.
"I think what's been interesting for us is the growth has been frankly a little faster than we expected it to be at this point," she said when asked about the status of the company's SMAC target.
McLoughlin added that over the next three to five years Cognizant expects Horizon 3 business to become a "meaningful part of revenue" and to become a meaningful part of its growth story and the company is on track to do that.
The company sees growing momentum across the three key segments of its Horizon 3 new technology architectures.
This includes SMAC, new markets and industries (such as Latin America and public sector) and new delivery models (such as pay-as-you-go, risk-reward).
Cognizant President Gordon Coburn had earlier said: "Our Horizon 3 offerings continue to gain significant traction with our clients and serve as a good illustration of our strategy of re-investment for long-term growth. In addition, we continue to invest in other areas within Horizon 3, including newer markets and industries."
The firm posted a 15.4% jump in net profit for the quarter ended September 30, 2013 at $319.6 million from $276.9 million year-on-year (y-o-y). Revenues were up 6.7% to $2.31 billion on sequential basis and 21.9% ($1.89 billion) on a y-o-y basis.
Buoyed by a strong set of numbers, the New Jersey-headquartered company revised its full year revenue target.
For 2013, it now expects revenue to be at least $8.84 billion, a growth of at least 20.3% over 2012. It had given a guidance of 19% growth in revenue ($8.74 billion) compared to 2012.
