DeWITT — ICS has added seven employees and more than 100 customers in its recent acquisition of J.B. Kane, a Liverpool information-technology (IT) firm.

The acquisition closed June 1, says Kevin Blake, ICS president and CEO, declining to provide any financial terms of the acquisition.

ICS is an IT support firm with offices in DeWitt, Endicott, and Ithaca. J.B. Kane specializes in computer networking, network-consulting services, and small-business IT consulting.

“They were a smaller IT company, [making] it harder for them to keep up with the ever-changing IT landscape … with all these cloud solutions and security requirements [in the] industry, it’s hard for a small company to keep up,” says Blake, who spoke with CNYBJ on Aug. 6. 

The conversations about the acquisition with J.B. Kane owner Jason Griffin started in March, says Blake. 

“We’ve made a lot of those investments and Jason recognized that, and after a few meetings with Jason, I realized quickly that our core values, both personally and our company core values were very closely aligned and it just made perfect sense,” explains Blake. 

J.B. Kane’s seven employees are now working in the DeWitt office of ICS located at 6007 Fair Lakes Road in the town of DeWitt. With the additional workers, ICS now has about 85 employees, says Blake.

J.B. Kane was servicing about 150 clients, all of which are companies located in Central New York. With the additional clients, ICS is now servicing a customer base that totals near 600.

“We intend [to] continuing to offer the same services that J.B. Kane [offered] to [its] client base and then adding a whole breadth of other services … a lot of things around the cloud, security … things that J.B. Kane did not do that we hope to introduce to their clients,” says Blake. 

Besides its clients in upstate New York, ICS also services customers in northeast Pennsylvania in communities such as Gowanda, Sayre, and Montrose.

J.B. Kane had previously operated at 1105 Vine St. in Liverpool, its website says. The company had leased that space, according to Blake.

“This integration has been gradually taking place over the past two months. It’s already clear that this was the best move for all parties,” Jason Griffin, former owner of J.B. Kane, said in the ICS release. “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to keep up with the dynamics in the ever-changing IT field and ICS has provided us with the tools we need to make this a seamless transition for employees and clients alike. The satisfaction of our customers is and always has been our number one priority and the partnership with ICS enables us to better serve their diverse needs going forward.”

Griffin will be a senior VP in the ICS organization, according to Blake.

Launched in June 1978, J.B. Kane became one of the first IBM-authorized typewriter dealers in Central New York, its website says.

When asked if ICS has plans for any additional acquisitions this year, Blake said he’s currently talking with two companies but declined to provide further details about those conversations.

“One of our strategies for growth is [through mergers and acquisitions] and [I] am very much open to meeting other companies that may not want to put the investment in to figure out the changing IT landscape,” says Blake.

He hopes to eventually establish operations in both Oneonta and Elmira, but has no definitive timeline on when that might happen.