NIIT announced its fourth acquisition of the year, by taking over AD Solutions AG (ADS), a privately held company with headquarters in Germany and subsidiaries in Switzerland and Austria. ADS, founded in 2000 through the management buy-out of a division of CGI Informatik GmbH, an IBM subsidiary, specialises in developing custom solutions and providing development outsourcing services. ADS will be a wholly-owned subsidiary of NIIT.

“This acquisition is a key element of our strategy to address the hitherto under-penetrated European market,” said Arvind Thakur, director and president of NIIT Technologies. “It will enable NIIT Technologies to effectively address the over $27 billion IT services market in Germany, Switzerland and Austria,” he added.

“ADS is a well respected custom solution provider in the logistics and financial industry space with reputed clients,” said C N Madhusudan, president of strategic alliances at NIIT.

NIIT CEO Vijay Thadani said that the ADS top management’s experience with IBM, and the subsequent building up of ADS would be of great advantage to NIIT in executing its vision in Europe.

In January this year, NIIT acquired the custom development business of Click2Learn. This was followed by the acquisition of Osprey, a SAP solutions provider and DEI, an insurance industry specialist.