Sopra Steria is a European-based consulting, digital services, and software development company with 50,000 consultants. The company is headquartered in Paris and has operations in several countries in Western Europe.
Sopra Steria has a new consulting wing under the "Next" brand. It employs 3,400 consultants across Europe, including 1,900 in the group's native France. After adding the shares held directly in registered form by current and former Group employees, these proportions amount to nearly 10% of the share capital and 13% of voting rights, thereby making employees the Group's second-largest shareholder.
History
Sopra was created in 1968, followed closely by the 1969 founding of Steria. SODERI (Information Research and Development Company) holds 51%, the BNP Group holds 29.5% and the Indochina Group holds 19.5%.
By 1971, Sopra signed its first large global banking managed services agreement, which led to the first banking platform the following year. Steria computerized Agence France-Presse in 1973 by creating a text processing system that enables real-time information transmission. After acquiring Sitintel in 1974, the group developed Minitel and eventually received its first major national project with the French Ministry of the Interior in 1986.
Steria's automation project for the RER A in Paris made it valuable enough to be registered on the Second Market of the Paris stock exchange (now the NYSE Euronext Paris) by 1990. Sopra set up its subsidiary, Axway Software, in 2001, through which the company expanded into the Enterprise Application Integration (EAI) market.
In 2014, Sopra and Steria officially merged into the Sopra Steria Group in August. On 31 December 2014, the legal merger of the two groups was completed. After the merger, Sopra Steria acquired CX-partners in 2019 and Fidor Solutions in 2020.
Sopra
Sopra was seated in Annecy, France. The company had a revenue of €1.349 billion (2013) and 16,290 (Dec. 2013) employees. It was founded in January 1968 by Pierre Pasquier, François Odin and Léo Gantelet. In March 2014, Sopra Group was renamed Sopra. In April 2014, Sopra announced a merger with Steria in an attempt to become the European leader in computer services. Sopra is a consulting, IT services, and software development company. Its subsidiary Sopra Banking Software develops and distributes software for the financial services market.
It runs three complementary business lines: consulting management and technology, systems integration, and software publishing in the following field in human resources and real estate management.
Acquisitions
Sopra's main acquisitions are: SG2 Ingénierie (1996) Orga Consultants (2000) ITI and CS Rand (2001) Inforsud Ingénierie from the Crédit Agricole Group (2003) Valoris (2004) Newell & Budge (UK) and its subsidiaries in Ireland and India, IT services (2005) 100% of the share capital of PROFit SA (2005) CIBF (2008) 100% of the share capital of Delta Informatique (2011) Callataÿ & Wouters (2012) British subsidiaries of Business & Decision and Tieto (2012) Callataÿ & Wouters and Delta Informatique (2012) HR Access (2013) COR&FJA Banking Solutions (2014) CIMPA (2015) Cassiopae (2017) Kentor (2017) 2MoRO (2017) Galitt (2017) BLUECARAT (2018) Sword Apak (2018) SAB (2019) Sodifrance (2020) Fidor Solutions (Fidor Bank) (2020) EVA Group (2021) EGGS Design (2021) Labs (2021) CS Group (2022) Ordina and Tobania (2023) MarinIT (2023)
Axway Software
In 2001, Sopra used its subsidiary Axway to access the EAI market. The following year, Axway acquired Viewlocity Inc. From 2006 to 2008, it acquired Cyclone Commerce, Inc., Atos Origin, and Tumbleweed Communications Corp.
Axway Software split from Sopra in June 2011 after its stock market launch.
Steria
Groupe Steria SCA was a multinational information technology services company founded in 1969, based in Issy-les-Moulineaux, France. It focused on public services, finance, telecommunications, utilities and transport, and provided consulting services for its clients' core business processes.
Steria was created by Jean Carteron in 1969. Francois Enaud took over as chairman and CEO in 1998 and Steria listed itself on the Paris Stock Exchange the next year. In 2000, Steria acquired three service and telecom companies in France and became one of the top five French service providers. In 2001, Steria started the Foundation Steria, a community support group. In July 2007, Steria acquired the United Kingdom-based IT outsourcing and technology company Xansa for £472 million in cash.