IBM plans to acquire BoxBoat Technologies, a DevOps consultancy and Kubernetes certified service provider. Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.
This is technology M&A deal number 393 that ChannelE2E has covered so far in 2021.
The BoxBoat deal is the latest piece in Krishna’s effort to pivot the enterprise technology provider toward multi-cloud software that drives business automation. Major software components in the strategy include Red Hat OpenShift, IBM Cloud Pak developments and IBM Spectrum Fusion storage solutions.
BoxBoat Business Background, DevOps IT Services
BoxBoat, founded in 2016, has 47 employees listed on LinkedIn. The company, headquartered in Bethesda, Maryland, helps customers "achieve Digital Transformation by adopting DevOps tools, automation, and cloud native technologies," BoxBoat says.
Key BoxBoat IT services and consulting focus areas include:
- Containerized applications and platforms
- Continuous pipelines: Process and tool set implementations
- DevOps as a Service
- Application modernization
- Cloud migrations
- Container orchestration
- Enterprise Container Platform installation and configuration
BoxBoat will join IBM Global Business Services' Hybrid Cloud Services business after the acquisition, which is expected to close this quarter. This deal follows IBM's acquisition of two other cloud services firms earlier this year – Nordcloud and Taos.
IBM Buys BoxBoat: Executive Commentary
In a prepared statement about the deal, Tim Hohman, CEO and co-founder of BoxBoat, said:
"We founded BoxBoat on the idea that containers and DevOps would become an industry standard with the potential to transform enterprise IT with lightning fast application deployment workflows. Joining IBM will allow us to realize a shared vision of helping clients innovate by successfully deploying container-based applications on-premise and to the cloud."
John Granger, senior vice president, hybrid cloud services at IBM added:
"Our clients require a cloud architecture that allows them to operate across a traditional IT environment, private cloud and public clouds. That's at the heart of our hybrid cloud approach. No cloud modernization project can succeed without a containerization strategy, and BoxBoat is at the forefront of container services innovation."
IBM MSP Spin-Out: Kyndryl Status Update
Meanwhile, IBM is on track to spin out Kyndryl as an independent managed infrastructure services provider (MSP) business before 2022.
Once IBM spins out the MSP business, the two companies will surely cooperate — but they could also wind up competing on some fronts. Indeed, Kyndryl will have six global managed services practices that span Cloud; Applications, Data & AI; Security & Resiliency; Core Enterprise & zCloud; Network & Edge; and Digital Workplace, IBM said in July 2021.
Additional insights from Joe Panettieri.
