Accenture Finds Big Data Bliss In Kogentix Buy

Providing customers with data analytics and ways to use big data to drive business was behind Accenture’s purchase of Kogentix, a company that provides AI tools to enterprises.

"It’s a huge growth area for us. And our ability to grow that is enabled by the talent and the skills and the experiences that we’re able to bring to our clients," Kingston Smith, who leads Accenture Applied Intelligence’s Midwest Analytics Practice, told CRN. "By acquiring a company like Kogentix, that’s a good cultural fit for us, and that has a specific skill set that we’re short on, allows us to continue to grow and expand the way that we serve our clients."

Accenture’s Applied Intelligence Division is the population of a large town, about 20,000. Even so, the 275-employee Kogentix had capabilities Accenture could find nowhere else.

"What Kogentix is very good at, their strategy from the beginning, has been to be a software service provider and a professional services provider," said Smith."And so they have built up what they call their AMP platform which consists of a number of different open-source technologies, using some advanced analytics tools on top of that, to provide that combination of software and service. So its really on some of those open source technologies, where they bring a lot of depth of expertise."

According to the company's website, Kogentix AMP "makes it possible to build, manage, monitor, and deploy AI applications."

Accenture announced they had purchased the Schaumburg, Ill. company Thursday for an undisclosed sum. Accenture has been on a buying spree this year with Kogentix serving as the company’s eighth acquisition in 2018. In the last three years, the $35 billion system integrator has made more than 70 acquisitions as part of a no holds barred cloud and digital transformation services offensive.

"Realizing the value of analytics is a strategic imperative for lots of our clients," Smith said. "There are still a lot of what I call ’Main Street companies’ that are still early on in their analytics journey. So there are lots of companies out there that are really prioritizing taking advantage of big data, and big data technology to secure their analytics capabilities."

Smith said there is a strong demand in data engineering and data science. He said Accenture is looking for firms that bring capabilities that can expand the types of services that it provides to clients. He said with Kogentix they saw a great cultural fit.

"One of the things that we liked about Kogentix is that they go to market and serve their client in a very similar to the way we’re focused on," he said. "Driving business outcomes. Exploiting specific analytic use cases and bringing big data, big data technology, and advanced analytics to drive those business outcomes."

Accenture – No. 2 on the CRN Solution Provider 500 -- hosted a town hall meeting at the Kogentix office in Illinois to announce the deal.

"Everybody seems very excited about the acquisition," Smith said. "We’re keeping all the Kogentix employees… The plan is Kogentix to continue to serve their clients as they have, and then over the course of the next couple years figure out how to integrate some of the support that they provide their clients with the work that we do for our clients."