Ramesys and Capita sitting in a tree…

Capita have purchased Ramesys.  To summarize: “Bloated company buys failing IT company that has won a lot of government contracts.  Public services are now even more dependant on a bloated company.”

Capita have a long track record of increasing prices for services so if you use Ramesys for IT services expect the price to go up within a 24 month period, especially if you are a BSF school.

Capita now own even more of the education market.  You may recall that Capita(and Serco) are being investigated for monopolizing the MIS market and were subsequently slammed by Becta. (although officially the investigation isn’t just Capita and Serco).

Here is the funny thing…  Ramesys speculated so much on potential growth over the BSF and other government contracts that they began bleeding money (2.9m last year, £5m the year before) even though the revenue was a tiny £34m.  Most of this money was bled due to BSF bids which as everyone in Education knows cost more to write than you get in initial profit but give you the potential for long term profit.   Ramesys do now have a number of BSF contracts however they are still massively dwarfed by RM’s dominance in this market place.  Surely if the BSF contacts are making UK companies stretch so hard to win them then the idea of such a difficult contract bidding process is more damaging than it is rewarding?  BSF schools have not been without problems.

It only leaves one question… Who will Serco buy?