09/17/2007

Fujitsu Consulting, the North America consulting and services arm of Fujitsu Limited, today announced that it has acquired OKERE, a privately-held, New York City-based consulting and IT services company. OKERE serves some of the largest global enterprises providing strategic planning, design and implementation services in the deployment of customer relationship management (CRM) and business critical custom solutions based on the software-as-a-service (SaaS) model.

ebizQ received the following:

The acquisition will form the basis of a new business unit within Fujitsu Consulting that will focus on providing a broad range of SaaS-based consulting, implementation and management services. OKERE's senior management team will remain with Fujitsu Consulting, providing continued leadership in business development and managing the progressive growth of the new unit. With this acquisition, Fujitsu Consulting establishes itself at the forefront of an important service delivery model in a rapidly-growing market.

Many organizations are attracted to the concept of SaaS delivery due to its rapid implementation, agility, scalability and other "on demand" attributes. According to Gartner, "Software as a service is forecast to have a compound annual growth rate of 22.1% through 2011 for the aggregate enterprise application software markets, more than double the growth rate for total enterprise software." SaaS is gaining acceptance as a delivery method for business critical applications.

"OKERE is known for its global enterprise experience in the SaaS-based delivery of CRM solutions, based on salesforce.com," said John Rose, President & CEO of Fujitsu Consulting. "By incorporating SaaS capabilities into our suite of offerings, Fujitsu Consulting builds on our reputation as being an information technology services provider with the optimal blend of capacity, expertise, agility and customer responsiveness."

"OKERE has enjoyed remarkable year-over-year growth since its inception by focusing on exceptional client service and delivery excellence in the fast-growing SaaS market," said John Orrock, CEO and founder of OKERE. "We are very excited to become part of Fujitsu Consulting. Combining our expertise in SaaS-based CRM solutions with the scale, global reach and resources of Fujitsu Consulting will enable us to further leverage our strong relationship with salesforce.com for enterprise scale SaaS-based CRM applications and vertical solutions."

Fujitsu Consulting intends to build upon these new SaaS capabilities along with its existing global delivery model to enable a new suite of systems integration and management services. OKERE has developed extensive SaaS experience with numerous enterprise-scale SaaS-based CRM system implementations in key vertical industry sectors such as financial services and manufacturing, including Fortune 100 investment banks, capital markets, wealth management and insurance firms.

"OKERE has been one of our most important strategic partners for several years," said Bobby Napiltonia, Senior Vice President of world wide channels and alliances, salesforce.com. "OKERE has managed and executed global enterprise CRM programs with an impeccable track record of success, serving clients of every size, ranging from pilot programs of 250 users to extended multi-year deployments for over 20,000 users. As OKERE evolves into the SaaS strategic business unit within Fujitsu Consulting, we see even greater potential to accelerate our growth in the enterprise sector."

"The OKERE acquisition is clear evidence that Fujitsu Consulting is building the service delivery models that clients demand," continued John Rose. "SaaS is the next step in the evolution of service delivery for business and we are leading the way."

OKERE's operations in the United Kingdom and Australia will remain intact as part of the new business unit within Fujitsu Consulting.

OKERE consultants will remain within their current assignments, ensuring continuity on existing projects and assuring clients of the same high quality service. The financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.