The story
Founded by Serge Godin on Jun 1976.1
1970s–1980s: Early years
CGI Inc. was founded as an IT consulting company on June 15, 1976, in Quebec City, Québec, by Serge Godin. Within several months he was joined by co-founder André Imbeau from Quebec City. They initially ran the business from Godin's basement with a single phone. Starting with one client, as the company grew in size the co-founders moved to Montreal, and by the end of their first year they had generated $138,000 in revenue. While CGI stands for "Conseillers en gestion et informatique" in French (which translates to "consultants in management and information technology"), the official English meaning would later become "Consultants to Government and Industry." In later years the company began to go to market as simply CGI.
Throughout the 1970s, CGI focused on the information technology (IT) services market. Later in the 1970s, CGI branched into IT outsourcing. CGI's annual revenue in 1986 was $25 million, and the same year CGI went public with an initial public offering (IPO).
1990s: Doubling in size
CGI earned ISO 9001 certification for their "project management framework" in 1994, and in doing so became the first IT consulting firm in North America to comply with the ISO quality standard. In 1995, CGI entered into a commercial alliance with the large telecommunications company Bell Canada, with Bell Canada purchasing CGI shares then valued at $18.4 million. By the end of 1996, CGI's annual revenue was $122 million. In 1997, CGI acquired the company CDSL Holdings Limited (CDSL). After the acquisition, CGI's employees in both Canada and internationally numbered 2,500. In 1998 CGI acquired the Canadian company Bell Sygma, a Bell Canada subsidiary, which almost doubled CGI's size.
2000s: Expansion into international markets
CGI acquired IMRGlobal in 2001 for $438 million, which added "global delivery options" for CGI. In 2003, the Canadian tech company Cognicase was bought out by CGI for US$221 million, and at the end of 2003 CGI had annual sales of $1.85 billion. In 2004, CGI purchased the majority of American Management Systems (AMS) for $858 million. As of late 2004, CGI was the world's eighth largest independent provider of information technology services.
CGI co-founder Serge Godin stepped aside as CEO in 2006, taking the new position of executive chairman of the board and appointing as new CEO Michael Roach. Annual revenue at CGI was $3.5 billion by the fiscal end of 2006. That same year, CGI became one of four primary Recovery Audit Contractors in the US, with responsibilities to audit region B. At the end of 2007, CGI had a backlog worth $12.04 billion and an annual revenue of $3.7 billion, employing around 26,500 people.
2010–2012: Second doubling in size
In 2010, CGI acquired Stanley, Inc. for an enterprise value of approximately $1.07 billion. The deal came close to doubling CGI's presence in the United States and expanded CGI into defense and intelligence contracts. In 2010, CGI was included in the Forbes Global 2000 ranking of the 2,000 largest public companies in the world. As of 2011, there were 31,000 CGI employees in 125 offices worldwide and 89% of professionals at CGI also owned company shares.
In 2012, CGI acquired the UK-based computer services company Logica for £1.7 billion (CAN$2.7 billion) in cash. The acquisition raised the number of CGI's staff from 31,000 to 68,000, and CGI became the fifth largest independent business processes and IT services company in the world. It also made CGI the biggest tech firm in Canada. In 2012, CGI won a $143 million contract to provide operational support for the Army's training elements, the Deputy Chief of Staff for Intelligence, and the United States Army Training and Doctrine Command.
2013–2015: Contract work
At the time, CGI's train occupancy mobile app, iNStAPP, was being used by several train companies and institutions in Europe. In February 2013, the independent analyst firm Verdantix published a report comparing technology consulting and systems integration firms' ability to build efficient renewable energy management systems. The report named CGI as No. 4 on the "overall capabilities" score. Continuing to work in the financial sector, CGI was rated as a "major contender" by Everest Group in a 2013 PEAK Matrix study looking at IT outsourcing capital markets.
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In 2014, CGI had contracts with federal businesses such as Defense Information Services Agency, visa processing in China, and the Coast Guard and Department of Homeland Security. CGI also worked with state governments, for example the California Enterprise Data to Revenue (EDR) Project for the California Franchise Tax Board. In 2014, The Globe and Mail reported that CGI was operating ten security centers, from which 1,400 CGI employees monitor "data traffic for an undisclosed number of customers" that include the Canadian Payments Association, the National Bank of Canada, and about forty Canadian government departments.
By 2014, CGI had been working with the European space industry for years, and had developed software that helps support the missions of over 200 individual satellites. CGI had also created the Constellation Control Facility that control's the Galileo Commercial Service's 30 satellites, and software for the first satellite in the world with e-sail (electric solar wind sail). In 2014, CGI was awarded a new contract by Inmarsat, the safety communications provider for 98% of airlines. In 2014, 16% of CGI's revenue came from software.
In 2014, Canadian Business named Michael Roach, then CEO of CGI, the most innovative CEO of the Canada of the year. Fiscal revenue by the end of 2014 was C$10.5 billion, and in the first quarter of 2015, CGI had revenues of $2.54 billion.
2016–present
As of 2016, CGI ranked number 955 on the Forbes Global 2000. At the time, CGI had assets worth C$20.9 billion, annual sales of $10.7 billion, and a market value of $9.6 billion.
In 2016, CGI had contracts with the British Columbia Ministry of Health, the U.S. Navy to work on their NAVSUP Business Systems Center, the Swedish social insurance agency, Sears Canada, and the Queensland government, among others.
In 2016, George D. Schindler succeeded Michael Roach as the third CEO in CGI's history.
In 2019, The Wall Street Journal indicated CGI was one of the cloud providers breached in the Chinese APT10 group's Operation Cloud Hopper hack, which exposed companies' data from 2013 to 2017. The first known target was Rio Tinto, who was accessed through CGI's managed cloud.
In 2024, François Boulanger succeeded George D. Schindler as the CEO.
In 2026, Tim Hulebaus was named CEO upon the announcement of François Boulanger’s retirement.
From Wikipedia’s article on CGI Inc., shared under CC BY-SA 4.0.8