Recent acquisitions boost Emtec’s ability to provide clients with game-changing technology solutions.
For years, an organization’s IT infrastructure consisted of a series of fairly rigid solutions designed to address individual business needs. Web, application and database servers hosted multiple applications that were largely isolated from each other, delivering very specific functions. As a result, IT organizations focused primarily on supporting users and keeping infrastructure up and running in a reactive role.
IT advances are now driving a fundamental shift in the role of the IT organization. Organizations are looking to more closely align their IT infrastructure with business objectives —making an investment where there is the best chance for growth. This overarching strategy is rapidly transforming IT from a support division to one that proactively drives and facilitates business innovation.
Emtec is uniquely qualified to help organizations and IT divisions make this critical transition. Widely respected for its value-based management methods, best-in-class technology, application development services and strategic IT consulting, Emtec has broadened its ability to support IT transformation initiatives with a series of recent acquisitions that have expanded its services portfolio and increased the depth of its engineering bench.
Expanded Portfolio
The June acquisitions of Secure Data, Inc. (SDI) and Xcellor both enhance Emtec’s services portfolio with the addition of a unique set of services and expansion of one of the firm’s existing offerings. The acquisition of Xcellor, a leader in high-performance business intelligence and data warehousing solutions and consulting services, allows Emtec to now offer a new Information Management practice. The SDI acquisition, meanwhile, adds scale to Emtec’s existing application-development practice. SDI specializes in developing financial and Web business applications for both federal government agencies and commercial clients.
“The world is changing, and the IT department can no longer just be a ‘technology provider’ delivering PCs or support and primarily concerned with minimizing business disruption,” said Sunil Misra, Chief Strategy and Delivery Officer, Emtec. “IT management is moving away from infrastructure support toward more of a strategic role — focusing efforts on technology that will directly contribute to growing the business.
“Simply put, our job is to help you make IT work for maximum return and value to your organization. The services and the talent we’ve added to our portfolio through these acquisitions enhance our ability to help clients transform IT into an investment that returns true value to their organizations.”
Making Data Useful
Emtec’s new information management practice will create business value by allowing clients to gather and correlate data in order to monitor business performance, analyze trends and measure results. Unlike previous business intelligence platforms that generated byzantine technical analysis of little help to most business users, Emtec’s focus will be on presenting information via an easy-to-use graphical “dashboard” that gives users an understandable view of real-time data from accounting, enterprise resource management (ERM), customer relationship management (CRM) and other systems.
Best of all, today’s information management tools can deliver relevant information to different audiences in ways that are most meaningful to them. Casual users, such as sales staff and some operations managers, can get dashboard views and reports that provide an uncluttered display of just the information that is relevant to them. Executives can get dashboards and scorecards that provide a summary of key metrics describing organizational health across lines of business. Power users, such as business and financial analysts, can access more sophisticated reports with the freedom to explore and analyze data from many sources.
Xcellor founders Peter LePine and Saj Patel, who will manage Emtec’s information management practice, bring proven experience with most major data integration products, database management technologies, and business intelligence platforms. They have particular expertise using Agile project management methodology coupled with IBM’s Unified Information Management portfolio of products to deliver a complete, integrated solution for managing, integrating and leveraging information.
“The capabilities from Xcellor provide a vast number of new opportunities for Emtec clients,” said Dinesh Desai, Emtec Chairman, CEO and President. “Emtec is continually focused on further enhancing our services and solutions, and this acquisition demonstrates our ability to align our offerings with client demands. We look forward to providing best-in-class offerings in the information management area across our verticals.”
An App for That
The SDI acquisition adds critical project-based application development capabilities for Emtec and will be a cornerstone of the company’s application-services practice in North America. It is the second application-development acquisition made by Emtec this year. The previous acquisition of SARK Infotech provided Emtec with a strong platform for the development of embedded software, Web applications and more. The SDI portfolio provides additional application development and consulting expertise, as well as proficiency with the Microsoft SharePoint platform.
SDI is a leader in leveraging SharePoint as an application development platform for building rich, collaborative Web applications and integrating with other line-of-business systems. SDI has helped both public- and private-sector organizations use SharePoint to develop sophisticated applications such as business intelligence, content archival, project management and more. The platform has robust application and data integration capabilities, making it easier to pull information from databases and other applications and integrate it directly into Web services.
SDI also has extensive experience creating business intelligence solutions using SQL Server, Performance Point and SQL Reporting Services. In addition to providing custom application development and collaboration tools, SDI has a strong background in solutions such as business process redesign, network management, security and messaging platforms — all of which complement Emtec’s existing portfolio.
The SDI acquisition will enhance Emtec’s already robust capabilities and experience in the federal government vertical. SDI (based in O O’Fallon, Ill.) has a long history of working with federal government agencies, particularly the Department of Defense (DoD).
“SDI is an extraordinary firm with exceptional individuals providing professional services to the DoD community,” said Brian Mandel, Executive Vice President, Public Sector, Emtec. “Adding this to our federal portfolio is significant as it continues to enhance our services offerings.”
Ultimately, the two acquisitions add to Emtec’s ability to draw upon practical experience across a wide range of industries and technologies to help clients apply proven solutions to key business challenges. As organizations seek to more closely align their IT infrastructure with business objectives, Emtec is committed to investing in the tools and the people needed to help clients leverage technology to reduce operating expenses, increase customer satisfaction, drive top-line growth and deliver competitive advantage.
