2017 began with two announced acquisitions within the solution provider space, and the completion of the split of Xerox into two companies. Meanwhile, wireless provider Sprint announced some good news for the U.S. job market.

$148 billion – Overall revenue across the six major cloud services and infrastructure segments evaluated by Synergy Research Group over four fiscal quarters ending in September 2016, up from $110 billion in the same period a year earlier. Synergy said that in 2016, cloud services surpassed cloud infrastructure in annual sales for the first time, driven primarily by growth from the lower layers of the cloud stack.

40 – Number of employees at Denver-based management consultancy RAS & Associates, which was purchased by solution provider giant Perficient. St. Louis-based Perficient said the deal will boost its investment in such areas as systems integration, data reporting and analytics. It also said the deal will enhance Perficient's management consulting offerings around strategy, operations and business process optimization consulting.

5,000 – Number of jobs wireless provider Sprint plans to create or bring back to the U.S. by the end of 2017. The new jobs are part of a broader investment by Sprint's parent, Japan's SoftBank Group, and Sprint said the jobs would support a "variety of functions" across the company, including bolstering its customer care and sales teams. The announcement comes a year after Sprint eliminated 2,500 jobs within its U.S.-based call centers and at its headquarters in Overland Park, Kan. Since 2013, Sprint has reduced its U.S.-based labor force by about 21 percent – eliminating about 8,000 positions. Sprint has since outsourced some of that work to contractors in overseas call centers.

$14.90 – Debut stock price on the New York Stock Exchange on Tuesday for Conduent, the $7 billion business process outsourcing provider that was once part of Xerox. (It closed the week at $14.63.) The separation of the companies closed Jan. 1 and was announced Tuesday morning, essentially undoing Xerox's $5.6 billion purchase of Affiliated Computer Services (ACS) in February 2010.

$2.86 million – Potential overall purchase price of Calgary, Alberta-based Stratiform, a Microsoft Gold partner. Solution provider PCM – No. 28 on CRN's Solution Provider 500 – announced its acquisition of Stratiform to boost its capabilities around Azure, Office 365 and the Enterprise Mobility Suite, as well as to strengthen its ability to provide cloud strategy, advisory, on-boarding, migration and management services. PCM paid $1.56 million up front, and Stratiform will be eligible for a $1.3 million earn-out over the next three years.