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IBM Corp. today announced that it has signed a deal to acquire BoxBoat Technologies Inc., a Maryland-based consulting firm focused on helping Fortune 100 companies and government agencies introduce software containers.

IBM expects the deal to accelerate the rollout of its OpenShift platform. OpenShift, which the company acquired through the $ 34 billion purchase of Red Hat, is a key part of it to plan Increase sales growth and profitability.

Software containers enable developers to write applications that run more efficiently and can be easily deployed on different types of infrastructure. As a result, corporate acceptance of the technology is increasing rapidly. BoxBoat offers support for organizations that do not have the necessary technical know-how to provision containers themselves.

One of the company’s areas of expertise is the containerization of existing company applications. Because containers can improve the efficiency of software, many organizations are using the technology not only to build new applications, but also to modernize legacy workloads.

The reason the task is challenging, and why companies often turn to consulting firms like BoxBoat, is because containerizing an existing application requires extensive code changes.

Legacy applications are usually based on a monolithic architecture, which means that their sub-components are fused into a single piece of software. Container applications, on the other hand, are typically based on a microservices architecture. Their components are not fused together, but work as separate modules, each running in a different container. In order to turn a monolithic application into a microservices-oriented workload, its components must be broken down into separate modules.

BoxBoat also helps clients with related tasks. The company works with companies that set up infrastructure environments in the public cloud or elsewhere to run their new containerized applications. Optionally, it can take over the day-to-day maintenance of these applications to free up resources for a company’s internal IT teams.

For software development teams, BoxBoat offers support in setting up DevOps pipelines. A DevOps pipe is a collection of software tools that enables a company’s developers to build applications faster by automating time-consuming tasks.

BoxBoat has completed projects for a variety of Fortune 100 companies and government agencies, according to IBM. The company has cloud partnerships with Amazon Web Services Inc., Microsoft Corp. and Google LLC. It becomes part of the hybrid cloud practice in the IBM Global Business Services business.

“Our customers need a cloud architecture that enables them to work in a traditional IT environment, a private cloud and a public cloud. It’s at the heart of our hybrid cloud approach, ”said John Granger, senior vice president of hybrid cloud services at IBM. “No cloud modernization project can be successful without a containerization strategy, and BoxBoat is at the forefront of container service innovation.”

IBM plans to use BoxBoat’s container know-how to expand OpenShift adoption. OpenShift is the company’s software platform for building and running containerized applications in the cloud. The software is a core component of IBM’s strategy to capture more of what Chief Executive Officer Arvind Krishna is described last year as a “$ 1 trillion hybrid cloud opportunity.”

BoxBoat’s container expertise will advance IBM’s OpenShift strategy as the type of complex enterprise software projects that IBM competes with OpenShift for often involves consulting services. The reason for this is that even tech-savvy companies sometimes need outside assistance with one or the other technical task. The more consulting services IBM can offer together with OpenShift, the easier it can be to implement the platform and thus lower the entry barrier for new customers.

Consulting and professional services are a significant source of income for IBM. In the past quarter, Global Business Services, into which BoxBoat Technologies will be incorporated, had sales of $ 4.2 billion. Overall, IBM estimates the market for professional cloud services at US $ 200 billion annually.

BoxBoat is the third cloud-focused consulting firm that IBM has acquired in recent months to strengthen this part of its business. Before that, it was bought Taos Inc. and Nordcloud Ltd., which had annual sales of more than $ 61 million at the time of acquisition.

IBM expects to complete the acquisition of BoxBoat by the end of the current fiscal quarter. Financial terms were not disclosed.

Photo: SiliconANGLE

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