Reliance buys out REC Solar in $771-million deal

Reliance New Energy Solar (RNES) has acquired REC Solar Holdings, which manufactures solar cells and panels, from China National Bluestar for an enterprise value of $771 million (Rs 5,793 crore), according to a press statement from the Mumbai-headquartered company.

REC Solar operates in North America, Europe, Australia, and Asia-Pacific, and employs more than 1,300 people. It has two factories in Norway to make solar grade polysilicon, and a factory in Singapore to make photovoltaic (PV) cells and modules.

The Reliance Industries subsidiary also announced a deal to invest more than Rs 3,900 crore for a 40 percent stake in Sterling & Wilson Solar (SWS). For this, it has entered into definitive agreements with Shapoorji Pallonji and Company, SWS, and Khurshed Daruvala, Chairman of SWS.

"With our other recent investments, Reliance is now ready to set up a global scale integrated PV giga factory, and make India a manufacturing hub for lowest cost and highest efficiency solar panels," Mukesh Ambani, Chairman of RIL, said in the press statement.

Accenture acquires Advoco

Accenture acquired Advoco, one of the largest systems integrators for Infor EAM, a leading software-as-a-service suite for enterprise asset management (EAM), last week.

The entire Advoco team will join Accenture’s Industry X group in the United States, strengthening its suite of services for digitising clients’ engineering and maintenance functions, factory floors and plant operations. Advoco specialises in configuring and integrating Infor EAM software with companies’ existing enterprise and operational systems, and EAM training programmes.

Facebook apologies for second outage

Facebook apologised to users for a two-hour disruption to its services—Instagram, Messenger and Workplace on Friday—attributing its second outage in a week to another faulty configuration change.

On October 4, Facebook faced a nearly six-hour outage because of a faulty configuration.

Google tries to showcase breaking news

Google is trying to enter Twitter’s turf by making 'search' more of a go-to destination for breaking news and live events, Bloomberg reported on Saturday.

In recent years, Google has placed a carousel of links to news sites at the top of search-results for certain events. Now, it is working on plans to showcase more relevant data and features in its search-results on a range of timely breaking news topics, the company told Bloomberg.

This is an area where micro-blogging platform Twitter has excelled, despite competing efforts from Google and Facebook.

Creative firm frog to expand services

Technology services company Capgemini will take design consultancy frog's services to market, even as it is now part of Capgemini Invent, the French multinational said in a press statement.

frog comprises more than 2,000 designers, technologists, data scientists, consultants and digital strategists, and has 35 design and innovation studios. It had been acquired by Aricent in 2010, which got acquired by engineering firm Altran Technologies in 2017, which in turn got acquired by Capgemini in April 2020.

“As part of Capgemini Invent, frog’s scale and technical expertise has been taken to another level, and is the partner of choice for driving customer-centric transformation, offering clients a host of new technical design expertise and a strengthened presence in Europe, the US, and Asia," said Cyril Garcia, CEO of Capgemini Invent and Capgemini Group Executive Board Member.

Capgemini Invent enables CxOs to envision and shape the future of their businesses, and comprises a 10,000-strong team of strategists, data scientists, product and experience designers, brand experts and technologists.

Honda Motor Europe signs up IBM

IBM has signed a five-year contract with Honda Motor Europe to manage its finance and procurement operations across Europe, extending a ten-year relationship between the two companies, the technology company said in a press statement.

As part of the deal, IBM will help Honda to work towards its vision of 'Zero Touch' by improving efficiency, reducing costs and standardising its processes.

"We plan to bring together people, processes and solutions into intelligent workflows through an optimised managed services approach that can enable Honda Motor Europe to enhance its finance and purchasing operations, and become the partner of choice to its network of dealers and suppliers," said Dave Miller, IBM Managing Director for Honda Global Account.