Atos

Atos SE, a French-headquartered IT services company with €11,181 million in revenue (2020) and over 110,000 employees, faced a severe operational crisis in its managed infrastructure business. Following years of acquisitions — Bull (2014), Xerox ITO (2015), and Syntel (2018) — Atos had accumulated a complex, fragmented infrastructure portfolio with duplicative operations across geographies. By 2021, the infrastructure-heavy portion of the business was in accelerating decline: the segment that would later become "Tech Foundations" contracted 11.4% organically, dragging group operating margin from 9.0% of revenue (€1,002M) in 2020 down to 3.5% (€383M) in 2021. Legacy hosting contracts signed at pre-cloud price points were becoming unprofitable as clients migrated workloads to hyperscalers, and the cost structure — weighed down by underutilized data center capacity from multiple acquisitions — could not support competitive pricing.

In June 2022, Atos announced a strategic separation into two entities: Eviden (digital, cloud, big data, cybersecurity) and Tech Foundations (managed infrastructure services). Tech Foundations, with 52,000 employees across 69 countries and €6,026 million in 2022 revenue, launched a focused transformation program:

• Data center rationalization: Began systematic closure of underutilized data centers, particularly in North America, incurring €47 million in rationalization costs in 2023 specifically for data center consolidation. Each closure required careful client workload migration and contract renegotiation.
• AWS strategic partnership: In November 2022, Atos and AWS announced a Global Strategic Transformation Agreement to accelerate client workload migrations to cloud. AWS provided migration tooling, workforce upskilling, and co-investment to reduce transition costs for both Atos and its clients.
• Underperforming contract restructuring: Systematically identified and renegotiated legacy hosting contracts that could not be made profitable under current cost structures, including repricing and scope adjustments.
• Structural cost discipline: Unwound the prior "Spring" internal program, implemented selective hiring controls, and imposed tighter management of structure costs — particularly energy, facilities, and administrative overhead. These actions drove a dramatic margin improvement in H2 2022.