IBM has acquired Seattle-based privately held firm Blue Box Group to speed up its open cloud strategy.
Blue Box offers managed cloud services for firms implementing private and hybrid clouds based on the open-source OpenStack cloud infrastructure platform.
The acquisition will enable IBM to help businesses quickly integrate their cloud-based applications and on-premises systems into OpenStack-based managed cloud.
IBM said a remotely managed OpenStack solution will offer clients with a local cloud and increased visibility, control and security.
Through Blue Box, IBM will deliver a public cloud-like experience within the client’s own data centre, reducing organisations workloads in traditional private cloud deployments.
Clients can move to data and applications across clouds and adopt hybrid cloud environments.
Blue Box founder and CTO Jesse Proudman said: "No brand is more respected in IT than IBM. Blue Box is building a similarly respected brand in OpenStack.
"Together, we will deliver the technology and products businesses need to give their application developers an agile, responsive infrastructure across public and private clouds."
A recent survey from Gartner has revealed that about 72% of enterprises plan to pursue a hybrid cloud computing strategy this year.
