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Keane bulks up warehousing with Emergent

IT consulting firm Keane is bulking up its data warehousing talents by scooping up privately-held Emergent.

Kim Girard
Kim Girard has written about business and technology for more than a decade, as an editor at CNET News.com, senior writer at Business 2.0 magazine and online writer at Red Herring. As a freelancer, she's written for publications including Fast Company, CIO and Berkeley's Haas School of Business. She also assisted Business Week's Peter Burrows with his 2003 book Backfire, which covered the travails of controversial Hewlett-Packard CEO Carly Fiorina. An avid cook, she's blogged about the joy of cheap wine and thinks about food most days in ways some find obsessive.
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Kim Girard
IT consulting firm Keane is bulking up its data warehousing talents by scooping up privately-held Emergent.

Boston-based Keane yesterday acquired all outstanding capitol stock in Emergent, a Menlo Park, California-based data warehousing services company with $4 million in 1998 revenue.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Emergent's data warehousing technology is expected to help Keane build its growing enterprise relationship management (ERM) practice. That practice includes building large, scalable and complex databases. Clients use these systems for customer tracking, targeting, and marketing intended to improve loyalty and boost sales.

"Emergent adds significantly to the depth of Keane's capabilities and credentials in building scalable data warehousing solutions," said John Keane, Jr., an executive in the office of the president.

Emergent's clients include Fleet Bank, Visa, United Airlines, Travelers Insurance, US West, and Equifax.

The acquisition should help Keane bulk up one of the many applications the company is cross-selling to its Year 2000 customers. Year 2000 services currently represent about 35 percent of Keane's total revenue, yet over the past several months, the $1 billion company has stepped up marketing of its consulting, development, and outsourcing services to prepare for a downshift in Year 2000 fixes.

Keane's stock was up 1.188 at $41 a share in midday trading.