iSoftStone Information Technology (Group) Co., Ltd. (iSoftStone; ) is a
publicly listed
A public company is a company whose ownership is organized via shares of stock which are intended to be freely traded on a stock exchange or in over-the-counter markets. A public (publicly traded) company can be listed on a stock exchange (li ...
Chinese
information technology
Information technology (IT) is a set of related fields within information and communications technology (ICT), that encompass computer systems, software, programming languages, data processing, data and information processing, and storage. Inf ...
company headquartered in
Beijing
Beijing, Chinese postal romanization, previously romanized as Peking, is the capital city of China. With more than 22 million residents, it is the world's List of national capitals by population, most populous national capital city as well as ...
.
Background
In 2001, iSoftStone was founded by
MIT Sloan School of Management
The MIT Sloan School of Management (branded as MIT Sloan) is the business school of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, a private university in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
MIT Sloan offers bachelor's, master's, and doctoral degree progra ...
MBA
A Master of Business Administration (MBA) is a professional degree focused on business administration. The core courses in an MBA program cover various areas of business administration; elective courses may allow further study in a particular a ...
graduate Liu Tianwen.
iSoftStone initially focused on providing
information technology consulting
In management, information technology consulting (also called IT consulting, computer consultancy, business and technology services, computing consultancy, technology consulting, and IT advisory) is a field of activity which focuses on advising or ...
and outsourcing services where it served clients such as
IBM
International Business Machines Corporation (using the trademark IBM), nicknamed Big Blue, is an American Multinational corporation, multinational technology company headquartered in Armonk, New York, and present in over 175 countries. It is ...
,
AT&T
AT&T Inc., an abbreviation for its predecessor's former name, the American Telephone and Telegraph Company, is an American multinational telecommunications holding company headquartered at Whitacre Tower in Downtown Dallas, Texas. It is the w ...
and
Microsoft
Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...
.
However it didn't compete with firms that focused on much large global projects such as
Accenture
Accenture plc is a global multinational professional services company originating in the United States and headquartered in Dublin, Ireland, that specializes in information technology (IT) services and management consulting. It was founded in 1 ...
, IBM or
Hewlett-Packard
The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company. It was founded by Bill Hewlett and David Packard in 1939 in a one-car garage in Palo Alto, California ...
.
Instead its competitions were mainly other Chinese firms as well as firms based in countries that had low wage costs.
iSoftStone made several acquisitions in the US. In February 2008 it acquired Akona Consulting, a
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is the most populous city in the U.S. state of Washington and in the Pacific Northwest region of North America. With a population of 780,995 in 2024, it is the 18th-most populous city in the United States. The city is the cou ...
-based business and technology consulting firm.
In October 2010, it acquired
Boston
Boston is the capital and most populous city in the Commonwealth (U.S. state), Commonwealth of Massachusetts in the United States. The city serves as the cultural and Financial centre, financial center of New England, a region of the Northeas ...
-based Ascend Technologies and in August 2011, acquired Adventier Consulting Group.
In December 2010, iSoftStone held its
initial public offering
An initial public offering (IPO) or stock launch is a public offering in which shares of a company are sold to institutional investors and usually also to retail (individual) investors. An IPO is typically underwritten by one or more investm ...
to become a listed company on the
New York Stock Exchange
The New York Stock Exchange (NYSE, nicknamed "The Big Board") is an American stock exchange in the Financial District, Manhattan, Financial District of Lower Manhattan in New York City. It is the List of stock exchanges, largest stock excha ...
(NYSE) where it raised $141 million.
Due to declining performance and stock prices iSoftStone made the decision to go private.
In April 2014, it accepted an offer from
China Everbright Investment Management to take it private in a $332 million deal and was eventually delisted from the NYSE.
iSoftStone attempted to go public in China and made three
backdoor listing
A reverse takeover (RTO), reverse merger, or reverse IPO is the acquisition of a public company by a private company so that the private company can bypass the lengthy and complex process of going public. Sometimes, conversely, the public compan ...
attempts but they all failed. In early 2022, iSoftStone regained its status as a listed company by listing on the
ChiNext section of the
Shenzhen Stock Exchange
The Shenzhen Stock Exchange (SZSE; ) is a stock exchange based in the city of Shenzhen, in the People's Republic of China. It is one of three stock exchanges operating independently in Mainland China, the others being the Beijing Stock Excha ...
. At this point, the majority of iSoftStone's revenue came from Chinese companies with almost 50% of it coming from
Huawei
Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. ("Huawei" sometimes stylized as "HUAWEI"; ; zh, c=华为, p= ) is a Chinese multinational corporationtechnology company in Longgang, Shenzhen, Longgang, Shenzhen, Guangdong. Its main product lines include teleco ...
.
According to a report in December 2024 by Canalys, iSoftStone secured second place in the desktop and notebook shipment rankings in Q3 2024.
See also
*
List of IT consulting firms
The following is a list of the largest notable information technology consulting
In management, information technology consulting (also called IT consulting, computer consultancy, business and technology services, computing consultancy, technolog ...
References
External links
*
Global website{{Outsourcing companies of China
2001 establishments in China
2010 initial public offerings
Companies based in Beijing
Companies formerly listed on the New York Stock Exchange
Companies listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange
Electronics companies established in 2001
Software companies of China