There must be something in the air. IBM is buying Blue Box, a company that specializes in OpenStack-based private clouds. If that sounds familiar, check out this story from oh, about an hour ago. Terms were not disclosed.
From the press release, Blue Box will help IBM (IBM) help customers “rapidly integrate their cloud-based applications and on-premises systems into OpenStack-based managed cloud. Blue Box also strengthens IBM Cloud’s existing OpenStack portfolio, with the introduction of a remotely managed OpenStack offering to provide clients with a local cloud and increased visibility, control and security.”
Blue Box founder and CTO Jesse Proudman and his team will report to Jim Comfort, IBM’s general manager of cloud services.
Seattle-based Blue Box says it offers a simple private cloud that makes it easier for customers to run workloads across different cloud environments, aka hybrid cloud.
So there.
IBM got into cloud in a big way with its $2 billion acquisition of SoftLayer two years ago, jettisoning much of its home-grown cloud work in the process in a bid to catch up to Amazon (AMZN) Web Services.
And still, the company, like Cisco, HP and other legacy IT providers continues to snarf up expertise, experts and customers as fast as it can. The cloud consolidation started two years ago and given this week’s evidence, is accelerating.
This morning, as mentioned, Cisco (CSCO) announced its purchase of Piston Cloud, and had already bought Metacloud. EMC (EMC) bought Cloudscaling a few months ago, and last week purchased Virtustream. And Hewlett-Packard, (HPQ) which has bought Eucalyptus last fall, is hosting a big event this week, so stay tuned on that front. And Oracle has not only hired on top OpenStack talent from Nebula, but has purchased Nebula’s intellectual property as well.
IBM claims it has surpassed the $7 billion in cloud revenue target it set some time ago. That figure faces much skepticism, but whether you believe it or not, it’s clear the company is still not done beefing up its cloud.
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