MUMBAI: Accenture Plc will acquire Ziff Davis Inc.’s Connectivity division for $1.2 billion, marking one of its largest deals in recent years and underlining the management’s aim to double its acquisition spend for the current fiscal.
The deal, announced Tuesday, gives the world’s largest IT services firm ownership of brands including Ookla, Downdetector, Speedtest, Ekahau, and RootMetrics. These units provide solutions in fixed broadband, mobile, and Wi-Fi network design, intelligence, insights, testing, and incident detection.
Accenture is expected to pay the amount in cash, with the acquisition set to close in the coming months. By comparison, the sum represents nearly four-fifths of the $1.5 billion the company spent on 23 acquisitions last fiscal, according to its financial statements. The firm expects to spend roughly $3 billion in acquisitions in the current year.
The Connectivity division, anchored by Ookla, employs at least 430 executives. Its services are used by telecom operators, hyperscalers including Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud, and large office complexes to identify weak signal areas and assess data centre connectivity for speed and AI readiness.
Accenture’s move mirrors strategies by homegrown IT services companies, which collectively invested $4.3 billion in major acquisitions this fiscal to build AI-era capabilities.
The $1.2 billion purchase price is roughly five times the Connectivity division’s $231 million revenue. The acquisition will likely contribute an estimated 0.3% in incremental revenue to Accenture’s fiscal-year revenue. For context, Accenture posted $69.67 billion in revenue last year, up 7.4%, while Ziff Davis’ connectivity business accounts for nearly a quarter of its total $1.45 billion annual revenue.
Management expects full-year revenue growth of 2-5% in local currency, which translates to roughly three-fourths of growth at the lower end and about a third at the upper end from acquisitions.
Strategic scale
Still, Accenture’s management attributed the acquisition to improving its software offerings by measuring their performance.
“Without the ability to measure performance, organizations cannot optimize experience, revenue, or security. By acquiring Ookla, we will help our clients across business and government scale AI safely and build the trusted data foundations they need to deliver the reliable, seamless connectivity that creates value,” said Julie Sweet, Chair and CEO of Accenture, as part of the company’s press release dated 3 March.
At least one expert said the acquisitions would lend authenticity to its offerings and also to those of its clients.
“It (Speedtest) became a reference layer for regulators, marketers, and investors. When an operator claimed the fastest network, the implicit question was whether Speedtest agreed,” said Sebastian Barros, managing director of Circles Co, a Singapore-based software company for telecom operators, in a blog post dated 3 March.
This deal ranks among Accenture’s largest acquisitions, alongside the 2013 acquisitions of consulting firm Procurian and digital marketing firm Acquity Group for $375 million and $316 million, respectively.
Like India’s leading IT firms, Accenture is pursuing large acquisitions. Homegrown IT services companies have led the charge since the turn of the century: among the larger players, Tata Consultancy Services Ltd spent $773 million acquiring US-based digital marketing firm ListEngage and Florida-based Salesforce consulting firm Coastal Cloud.
Even so, both Accenture’s and TCS’s spends are dwarfed by mid-tier IT services provider Coforge Ltd, which in December 2025 completed the largest acquisition by an Indian IT firm, buying US software company Encora in an all-stock deal valued at $2.39 billion.
However, there is one common thread between Coforge and Accenture even as the value of their acquisitions varies – both have spent more on acquisitions than they did on shareholder payouts. As of the three months ended November 2025, Accenture paid $1 billion as dividends to shareholders. On the other hand, Coforge spent ₹260 crore ($28.2 million) in shareholder payouts in the first nine months of the fiscal.
Accenture announces its second quarter results on 19 March.