Cognizant aims to build massive ServiceNow business with Thirdera acquisition

The acquisition is set to close within the next four to six weeks

Global IT services provider Cognizant Thursday said it will acquire ServiceNow Elite channel partner Thirdera in a move to build one of the largest and most credentialed ServiceNow partners.

The acquisition, for which no dollar value or other terms were given, is slated to close within the next four to six weeks.

Teaneck, N.J.-based Cognizant, ranked No. 6 on CRN's 2023 Solution Provider 500, plans to combine its team of 1,500 people focused on ServiceNow with 940 people from Thirdera into its ServiceNow business group, which will be run by Jason Wojahn, CEO and co-founder of Thirdera (pictured above).

Wojahn's new title at Cognizant has yet to be decided.

Broomfield, Colo.-based Thirdera, founded only three years ago when three ServiceNow channel partners were combined by a private equity company, was focused on helping customers achieve the most value on ServiceNow, Wojahn told CRN.

"We built Thirdera as the largest global pure play partner to help customers achieve more value with ServiceNow," he said. "And as we continue to explore the ‘third era,' this digital transformation across the enterprise and across industries, it just became clearer and clearer to us that we needed more reach. We needed more scale."

And, Wojahn said, it just so happens that Cognizant was also exploring the same sort of thesis.

"Cognizant needed more depth, and more ServiceNow focus," he said. "And so we come together in a really complementary way. Our agendas are complementary. Our ambitions for customers, for getting more value out of ServiceNow and using ServiceNow as a catalyst to transform their enterprise, is aligned. And our companies were extremely well aligned as well."

Cognizant's acquisition of Thirdera will result in what the company expects will be one of the largest ServiceNow consultancies on the planet, Wojahn said.

"What this does is, it creates a more comprehensive practice for both of us," he said. "We get additional regions and scale of resources. Cognizant gets additional certified master architects, certified technical architects, and additional ways of training and enabling next-generational resources. We bring our IP (intellectual property) together with Cognizant's IP into one harmonised place. And again, what that allows us to set up is just much more comprehensive than either one of us could have done alone."

Thirdera, since its founding three years ago, has grown fast, and in a profitable way, Wojahn said. While the company has already done six acquisitions, it has actually hired more people organically than were acquired, he said.

"That was just to keep up with demand and build this comprehensive ServiceNow-focused entity," he said. "What we found was, there are very few places in the world where you can get a full complement of ServiceNow services in one house. We found that to be something that customers really appreciate and value. And particularly as they're transforming the way they work with ServiceNow, having that reach and that depth together one package was really was really something that allowed us to grow very quickly."

Thirdera was not actively looking to become acquired, Wojahn. Instead, Cognizant approached his company during the Summer, and the two companies have engaged in on and off talks since then, he said.

Cognizant and Thirdera did not have a history of partnering in the ServiceNow space, and were not competitors, Wojahn said. There is very little overlap in terms of market regions and customers, he said.

"So it's a very complementary team, and should be very straightforward to bring together and harmonise," he said. "And the ultimate point of the whole thing is to put ourselves in a position where we're able to inflect and achieve that kind of third era effect across the broader portfolios of customers. And this is going to position us very well for that."

Cognizant has been building its ServiceNow practice for years. The company in June unveiled a strategic partnership to advance the adoption of AI-driven automation across multiple industries and help Cognizant eventually build a combined billion-dollar Cognizant and ServiceNow business.