IBM has planned to buy BoxBoat Technologies, a leading DevOps consulting and Kubernetes certified enterprise service provider. Where, IBM’s container strategy and implementation services offering will be expanded by BoxBoat in order to further advance IBM’s hybrid cloud vision and boost Red Hat OpenShift adoption around the world.
“Our clients require a cloud architecture that allows them to operate across a traditional IT environment, private cloud and public clouds. That’s at the heart of our hybrid cloud approach,” said John Granger, Senior Vice President, Hybrid Cloud Services at IBM. “No cloud modernization project can succeed without a containerization strategy, and BoxBoat is at the forefront of container services innovation.”
BoxBoat adds on IBM’s continued investment in hybrid cloud services and driving development within the $200 billion cloud professional services market, demonstrating IBM’s strong commitment to clients’ successful cloud journeys. Following IBM’s acquisition of top cloud services firms Nordcloud and Taos in the first quarter of 2021, significantly expanded IBM’s multicloud transformation, management knowledge, and capabilities.
Kubernetes and Containers Are Leading Drivers of Digital Transformation
Containers and Kubernetes are two of the most important drivers of digital transformation in businesses. Containerization of software applications makes life easier for developers by abstracting computer infrastructure further, and enterprise container systems are becoming more popular. More than 85% of worldwide enterprises will be operating containerized applications in production by 2025, up from less than 35% in 2019. 2 At the same time, Kubernetes, an open source platform for deploying and managing containers, is quickly gaining traction, becoming preferred way for building digital services at scale and across clouds. According to the StackRox “State of Container and Kubernetes Security” Fall 2020 research, 91 percent of enterprises use Kubernetes to orchestrate containers, with 75 percent actively using Kubernetes in production.
BoxBoat will join IBM Global Business Services’ fast-growing Hybrid Cloud Services business, allowing IBM to better fulfil client demand for container strategy as well as the crucial people and process components of the cloud transformation journey. BoxBoat offers a comprehensive set of services, including tailored Kubernetes and Enterprise Container Platform adoption plans, application containerization, DevSecOps, training, and enablement. BoxBoat advises businesses on the best tooling, business strategy, workflows, and processes for achieving DevOps objectives.
Tim Hohman, CEO and Co-Founder of BoxBoat, said, “We founded BoxBoat on the idea that containers and DevOps would become an industry standard with the potential to transform enterprise IT with lightning fast application deployment workflows.” He further added, “Joining IBM will allow us to realize a shared vision of helping clients innovate by successfully deploying container-based applications on-premise and to the cloud.”
The BoxBoat team includes highly competent engineers with an average of nine years in the industry, active open source contributors, Kubernetes Admins, Kubernetes Application Developers, and automation experts. Their highly skilled team is certified in Amazon Web Services, Docker, GitLab, Google Cloud Platform, Hashicorp, Kubernetes, and Microsoft Azure technologies.
The company also holds partnerships with Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform. BoxBoat was also the first GitLab Certified Professional Services Partner to get certified.
The deal is subject to the usual closing conditions. It is expected to close this quarter.