Accenture Acquires Kogentix to Help Clients Run Legacy Analytics Applications on Open Source Technologies to Get Ahead of Data Surge

Accenture has acquired Kogentix. Kogentix, headquartered in Schaumburg, Ill., will strengthen Accenture Applied Intelligence’s growing data engineering business, particularly in North America, as companies are increasingly looking to harness open source big data and advanced analytics technologies to identify revenue growth and cost reduction opportunities across the enterprise.

Companies using these technologies can drive business insights from huge data sets much faster. This has become imperative as data keeps soaring and today’s customers expect businesses to provide personalized experiences in real time. However, it is putting many companies, which run analytics applications built on proprietary technologies 10-20 years ago, in a tight spot.

Kogentix offers a range of assets to move long-standing applications to technologies such as Hadoop, Spark and Python, which can analyze larger volumes of data with more speed and processing efficiency. Additionally, transitioning legacy analytics applications to these technologies will allow companies to reduce licensing costs and recruit from a wider pool of data talent, as the new and growing generation of data scientists and engineers is trained on these platforms.

Narendra Mulani, chief analytics officer, Accenture Applied Intelligence, said, “Open source big data platforms and artificial intelligence are offering companies more opportunities than ever to become data-driven, intelligent enterprises. But marrying these new technologies with their old analytics world is becoming a key challenge for them. With Kogentix’s assets and highly skilled team of big data and AI professionals, we are even better positioned to help clients realize the value of open source analytics platforms and embed new intelligence at the core of their businesses.”

Boyd Davis, CEO and co-founder of Kogentix, said, “We founded Kogentix because we knew that big data and machine learning would play a critical role in transforming enterprises. The opportunity to leverage data for better business outcomes has never been this exciting. Becoming part of Accenture Applied Intelligence will allow us to seize a greater share of this market. We’re excited by the scale and scope of projects that will open up to us, as well as the long-term career and growth opportunities for our team.”

Boyd Davis and the other co-founders, Sanjay Gogia (COO), Jai Malhotra (CTO), and Krishna Nimmagadda (President), will continue to play key roles in leading the business.

Kogentix, founded in 2015, has a team of nearly 220 big data engineers, data scientists, machine learning engineers, and software developers. In addition to its Schaumburg headquarters, Kogentix has offices in Pleasanton, Cal., Hyderabad and Bangalore (India), Singapore, and Jakarta (Indonesia). Its clients include technology, high-tech, healthcare, consumer goods, and financial services companies.

Applied Intelligence employs more than 6,000 data scientists, data engineers and AI professionals worldwide. It has received several recognitions from leading industry analyst firms in the past six months including for Business Analytics Services, Data and Analytics Services and Smart Analytics.

In August 2017, Accenture acquired Search Technologies, a content analytics and enterprise search with nearly 200 big data engineers and search experts, into its Applied Intelligence practice.

Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.

The amount of data generated every day is 2.5 billion gigabytes, according to Domo, the equivalent to 90,000 years of HD video, according to Cisco. A survey conducted by Harvard Business Review Analytics Services shows that most business leaders believe harnessing data to interact with customers in real time is key, and both consumers and business buyers increasingly demand and value it, according to studies from Salesforce.