Betting that demand for hybrid clouds will grow strongly, IBM has acquired Blue Box, which specializes in offering OpenStack open source cloud hosting services.
IBM will use Blue Box's technology and infrastructure to help its customers adopt hybrid cloud computing, so that their workloads can be easily moved between a public cloud and their own data centers.
A private company, Blue Box gives organizations an alternative to setting up and deploying the OpenStack internally, offering the software stack as a service instead. This allows an organization to control workloads from a single console whether they run on Blue Box's private cloud or on internal infrastructure.
Approximately 300 organizations have used Blue Box's private clouds, including global media conglomerate Viacom and healthcare technology company BioIQ
IBM is banking that its customers interested in cloud computing will be drawn to the hybrid model, and will use OpenStack as the base for such operations. Last month, the company installed OpenStack on its Softlayer cloud services, which was also a move to offer better support for hybrid cloud operations.
Approximately 72 percent of enterprises plan to pursue a hybrid cloud computing strategy, according to a recent survey from Gartner.
Financial details of the acquisition were not disclosed.
Joab Jackson covers enterprise software and general technology breaking news for The IDG News Service. Follow Joab on Twitter at @Joab_Jackson. Joab's e-mail address is Joab_Jackson@idg.com