‘Clients want alternatives to US technologies’: Sopra Steria COO on pan-European focus

Dominique Lapère reflects on the company’s UK ambitions, Ukraine involvement, and setbacks with the Ministry of Defence

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Dominique Lapère

Born in Paris from the merger between Sopra and Steria in 2014, two companies with a combined century of experience, Sopra Steria is now a major European player.

Both companies already had a strong presence in the UK market before their merger, notably thanks to Steria’s 2007 acquisition of Xansa, as Dominique Lapère, the firm’s COO, explains in an interview with CRN.

While France still represents 42 per cent of the organisation’s total revenue as of FY24, the UK is not to be outdone, representing 17 per cent of the company’s revenue.

France and the UK’s revenue respectively amounted to €2.44bn and €962.1m in FY24.

In FY24, its global revenue stood at €5.78bn (£4.94bn).

The company employs around 50,000 people globally, about 7,000 of whom are in the UK.

The organisation’s third biggest region is the Benelux, which it entered in 2023 through the buyout of Netherlands-based Ordina and Tobania.

The Nordics are the business’ fourth most important territory, as Sopra Steria is the number one IT actor on the Norwegian market, according to the COO.

According to Gartner, Sopra Steria ranks number four in Norway.

There are followed by Germany, Spain, and Italy, in order of importance.

“We’re also in Poland, which is a services centre, that we refer to as ‘X-shore’, and then India, which operates offshore,” he explains.

UK activities, government involvement, Chinese breach, and the NHS

Despite good results in the UK private sector, the firm’s public income has dropped in FY24, leading to a 0.5 per cent decrease last financial year, from €966.5m to €962.1m.

“Our UK activity is built around very large contracts,” says Lapère.

“When we win them, it’s great, but when we lose them, it creates a major gap.

“What happened was we had a large contract with the Home Office that came to an end.

“Meanwhile, we signed a contract with NS&I, but that contract was delayed because the incumbent provider was Atos, and given their financial situation, that created complications.”

According to Sopra Steria, it isn’t yet possible to officially confirm whether the delay was caused by Atos.

“As a result, the contract only really kicked off in early April.

“We expected it last year, and it was supposed to compensate for the end of the Home Office contract.

“So yes, it came late, but now it’s in full swing.”

It also works in the UK through one of its subsidiaries, Shared Services Connected Ltd (SSCL).

SSCL, a joint venture between Sopra Steria and the Cabinet Office, was set up in 2013 to serve as a critical business support services provider for the UK Government, Ministry of Defence (MoD), Metropolitan Police Service, and the Construction Industry Training Board (CITB).

In 2023, Sopra Steria bought the 25 per cent stake owned by the Cabinet Office for an amount of £82.3m in cash.

The subsidiary’s contract with the UK Government was recently renewed for three more years, a contract extension valued at more than £300m, to provide services across finance and accounting, pensions administration, payroll, procurement, and contact centre support.

But as in most marriages, life is not always a long, quiet river.

In May 2024, the venture went through a period of hardship when what was at the time rumoured to be a cyberattack from China allegedly broke into the payroll system used by the MoD.

Defence secretary Grant Shapps said at the time that the estimated number of people affected was up to 272,000.

“It made a lot of noise at the time, partly because it reached the political level, but to be honest, it didn’t deserve that much attention,” explains Lapère.

The incident happened two months before the UK general election, at a time when the political campaign raged across the country.

A joint investigation between the Ministry of Defence and Sopra Steria into the Armed Forces payment network compromise in 2024, found no evidence that any data was taken from the system.

“There were no consequences. Still, it was a wake-up call.”

“There was never any accusation, but there were questions.”

To prevent these types of events from happening again, he explains that Sopra Steria is “even more careful now” with its subcontractors’ backgrounds.

“Today, I can say with great confidence that we’ve had meetings at the highest level - including with SSCL and our clients - and everything has now been clarified.”

In addition to the UK Government, Sopra Steria counts the NHS as one of its major clients.

“They have recently let us know they want to continue their collaboration.”

It also has strong ties with the UK military, as it manages people, pension, and IT services for 180,000 serving personnel, and around two million veterans on behalf of the Ministry of Defence (MOD), and is currently working on more “confidential military projects, some of which may extend beyond the UK.”

These activities, combined with the renewal of some of its biggest contracts, make Lapère confident about next year.

“We’re fairly confident about the UK.

For FY25, the company expects to “edge closer to the symbolic €1bn mark,” provided that the year goes well.

But Lapère remains realistic about his ambitions.

“I don’t think we’ll quite reach it, it’s a tough year, but the fact that it’s possible shows that we’re doing fairly well.”

The fact that 60 to 70 per cent of the UK activity relies on multi-year contracts makes the country a more predictable geography than France, which still leans on these types of contracts, but in a smaller amount.

“We have more project-based work in France, and those projects can fluctuate more.

“Some may be large, some may get postponed, and that’s more prevalent in France than in the UK.”

Due to geopolitical context and financial priorities, large international clients can also end up not being very future proof.

“For instance, there’s a major SAP project in the south of France that was supposed to sign last year but has been delayed,” explains the COO.

“It might sign this year, but we can’t be certain, which is hurting us.

“On top of that, we have some time-and-materials business in France - essentially staff augmentation - which has also suffered in the current economic climate.

“Some clients, especially in banking, have decided to stop certain projects.”

Business lines and vertical sectors

Throughout these markets, Sopra Steria addresses three main business lines across four market segments.

The first is its historical core business: application services.

It represents the largest part of the company’s activity, and involves building complex systems for clients, as well as maintaining them.

On new projects, Sopra Steria also works with new technologies, such as AI, cloud, and quantum.

The second area is consulting, with its consulting brand, “Next”, deployed across Europe.

The third one is IT infrastructure services, which is no longer about application services but lower-level layers, which may or may not include cybersecurity, according to the COO.

Among these different businesses, the UK has a specificity; Business Process Services (BPS)

“BPS can fall under consulting, since it involves going into a client’s environment to optimise how they deliver processes using technology, IT, and transformation,” said Lapère.

The company applies these business lines across its four most strategic sectors:

“We know exactly where we want to go and how we want to grow,” explains the leader.

“In certain countries - Italy, for example - we also do some work in retail and luxury, but that’s more specific to the local market.”

The company also has a strong focus on consulting, with the ambition of having consulting account for 12 per cent of its total revenue by 2027.

The recent acquisition of Aurexia, announced in May 2025, was carried out with this objective in mind.

“It’s a form of consulting that’s closely tied to technology,” explains Lapère.

“It’s not purely business consulting, but more about how technology can meet the client’s needs.”

Sopra Steria aims to develop its consulting activity transversally, especially in the financial services sector.

“Financial services still haven’t reached full IT maturity, so the need is very high.

“We’re seeing a lot of large tenders across our geographies that confirm this.

“You’d expect banks’ IT systems to be fully mature because they are essentially the engine of their operations, but their IT maturity still lags behind sectors like aerospace, where, for example, at Airbus, the information system is much more advanced.”

Mergers and acquisitions

Its European ambitions are fuelled by acquisitions, on which the company always has its eyes on.

“We are very acquisition driven.

“We’re focused on accelerating our development, and a large part of our growth comes from external acquisitions.

“Today, if we were to identify acquisition targets, Germany would be high on the list.

“We’re already present there, but not sufficiently, given our size.

“If a significant opportunity were to arise in Germany, we would definitely look at it very seriously.”

“If it’s in the UK, we’re interested.

“If it’s in France, we’d ask more questions; we would go for an opportunity if it were in relation with financial services or defence.”

In September 2024, Sopra Steria finalised the sale of most of Sopra Banking Software’s activities to French and US software vendor Axway to clarify its strategy by refocusing on digital services and solutions, which put the organisation “in a strong financial position.”

“We can spend up to €1bn in equity if needed,” explains Lapère.

“We could go after a large acquisition, but we’re also looking at smaller ones.

“If you want to keep growing, acquisitions are the way forward.

While Sopra Steria shows a huge appetite for the European continent, it does not yet intend to expand to the last three letters of EMEA.

“It’s not part of our strategic direction.

“Our goal is to be strong in the European market.

“In today’s geopolitical context, we see a real opportunity for a strong European leader.

“That doesn’t mean we’ll never go back into Middle Eastern or African markets, but for now, the focus is very clearly on Europe.

“If we came across an acquisition opportunity in Africa, we wouldn’t necessarily pursue it.”

Shift to European technologies

Despite Trump’s economical hostility towards its historic allies, Sopra Steria has reportedly not been impacted by the tariffs.

Lapère has acknowledged that a growing number of clients are now asking for alternatives to American technologies, regarding AI and hypersecalers.

On some projects, the company has “unplugged” Open AI and plugged in Mistral AI instead, an AI company based in Paris,

In February, the two firms partnered with the intend to “sustainably transform industrial processes and enhance the competitiveness and digital sovereignty of European economic players.”

But even if it has found alternatives in the field, the choice is more limited when it comes to hyperscalers, the COO tells CRN.

“The ecosystem has become highly dependent on AWS, Google Cloud, and Azure.

“They offer excellent tools and have reached a high level of maturity.

“Alternatives like OVHcloud exist, but the service levels aren’t quite there yet.”

He explains that AWS offers around 300 different services, an amount that French cloud provider OVHcloud is not yet matching.

But the organisation maintains a strong relationship with the Parisian vendor, as Lapère thinks “they’ll be pushed to accelerate their development - faster than initially planned - precisely because clients are starting to demand alternatives.”

In addition to AWS, the company works with Microsoft and Google.

Besides OVHcloud in Europe, it is also involved with S3NS, the cloud partnership with Thales, “which offers sovereignty benefits, although it’s still Google technology behind it.”

These changes didn’t make Sopra Steria to deviate from its long-term goals, as the company still aims to reach more than €7bn in revenue by 2028.

Far from naively looking at a world that is progressively shaping in an increasingly odder form, the company is considering two main trends, says Lapère.

“First, the market is slowing down.

“We already sensed it last year, and it’s more noticeable this year.

“We’re less impacted than some of our competitors, but we’re still affected.

“On the flip side, we’re increasingly being seen as a viable alternative to large American IT players.

“For example, in some recent cases, we’ve been able to chip away at opportunities that would have previously gone to Accenture.

“That’s not yet a large-scale trend, but we’re seeing signs.”

Wartime opportunity and AI development

While the current events around the globe can be a major disruptor to “business-as-usual”, they also bring their share of economic opportunities for the company, notably in the defence sector.

“We’ve been approached by a ministry of defence to start implementing some systems that could be used in Ukraine.

“The geopolitical context is creating a need for battlefield operations management systems, and that presents an opportunity for us.

“Of course, we can always ask ourselves the ethical question, we’re talking about war here, but it’s a sector where, given the current climate, we’ll certainly continue to grow.”

Besides the UK and Ukraine, it is also in contact with the ministries of defence in France and in Norway.

Outside of defence, Lapère tells CRN the firm is going through a transitional moment, influenced by technology such as the rise of AI.

But now it feels ready to answer the needs of customers who require more from the new tech thanks to its rAIse programme launched a few years ago, employing 60 people working full-time.

“I like to describe it as a kind of research cell - exploring what’s possible with AI.

“Thanks to that, we’ve been able to renew some major contracts by introducing notable cost optimisation strategies, provided the clients are willing to use AI.

“It also allowed us to equip ourselves internally.

“We’ve developed AI-powered tools, and not just GenAI, but also deep learning and related fields.”

The company has built a tool for its consultants called Cedric, based on AI, which intends to assist them in accessing resources and generating tailored offerings.

These types of tools, says the COO, aim to boost productivity and quality, and reduce the time spent on tasks that AI can handle better than a human, even though a human eye is still essential at the end of the process.