CenturyLink Acquires SAP Partner SEAL Consulting -

has acquired SEAL Consulting, an SAP solutions provider focused on the manufacturing, retail and consumer industry verticals. Although CenturyLink is best known for its network services, the telco giant also is a global premium supplier partner with SAP, offering key services for SAP HANA Enterprise Cloud.

CenturyLink did not disclose financial terms of the buyout. But the company "expects to continue leveraging the expertise of SEAL Consulting employees." We're checking to determine SEAL's official headcount. LinkedIn lists it as 501 to 1,000 employees. The company has roughly 250 enterprise customers, according to SEAL's website.

"CenturyLink's strengths in global network, hosting, cloud, IT and managed services, big data and analytics services, combined with SEAL Consulting's deep SAP expertise, will enable businesses to accelerate their SAP adoption and drive innovative business transformation projects," said Gary Gauba, chief enterprise relationship officer and president, Advanced Solutions Group, CenturyLink, in a prepared statement. Badal Patel, president and CEO of SEAL, also was quoted in the news announcement but his new title at CenturyLink was not revealed.

CenturyLink has leveraged M&A to acquire and shed multiple assets over the past year. The company in October 2016 confirmed plans to acquire Level 3 Communications for at least $19 billion, essentially betting heavily on the network services market going forward. And a consortium of financial firms acquired CenturyLink data center business for $2.15 billion in November 2016. CenturyLink continues to offer a range of cloud services, but the data center sale ended the company's bid to compete head-on against Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.

SAP Consulting Acquisitions

Within and across the IT channel, SAP consulting firms have been hot acquisition targets over the past year. Among the recent examples:

TriCore has been an active buyer of SAP- and Oracle-focused partners.
Cognizant acquired Frontica Business Solutions for $128 million in October 2016.

At the same time, SAP channel partners have been evolving from traditional software projects toward SaaS-driven engagements, SAP VP Meaghan Sullivan explained in this ChannelE2E Podcast.

Complete M&A Coverage: Track all VAR, MSP and CSP mergers and acquisitions by visiting the ChannelE2E Milestones section daily.