IBM has acquired Neudesic, a California-based cloud services consultancy specialising primarily in the Microsoft Azure platform, along with skills in multicloud.

This acquisition should significantly expand IBM’s portfolio of hybrid multicloud services and advance the company’s hybrid cloud and AI strategy.

IBM continues to invest in its hybrid cloud and AI strategy, expanding its cloud services technology, skills and capabilities to meet the growing demand of clients’ hybrid cloud needs.

Including Neudesic, IBM has acquired more than 20 companies – 12 in IBM Consulting alone – since Arvind Krishna became CEO in April 2020. This news builds upon IBM’s prior acquisitions of cloud transformation capabilities, including Sentaca, SXiQ, BoxBoat, Nordcloud and Taos.

To improve operational agility, businesses are investing aggressively in their application portfolio and, according to IDC, 69 per cent of companies worldwide view application modernisation as a top or high priority. The ability to accelerate digital transformation through application development, modernisation and data capabilities, powered by the cloud, plays a significant role in achieving operational goals. Yet enterprises are facing an acute cloud-native skills shortage.

“As one of the leading cloud platforms, Microsoft Azure is key to many of our clients’ ability to modernise and innovate,” said John Granger, senior vice president at IBM Consulting. “Neudesic adds deep Azure cloud, data engineering and data analytics expertise to accelerate our clients’ hybrid cloud journeys. This builds upon IBM’s prior acquisitions of cloud transformation capabilities last year.”

Judson Althoff, executive vice president at Microsoft, added: “Customers are driving incredible acceleration across Microsoft cloud services, and it’s more important than ever to have trusted partners, like IBM, skilled in our technology. Neudesic and Microsoft are enabling enterprises to achieve their business outcomes with our Azure platform, leveraging a combination of services and IP. With this acquisition, IBM Consulting is gaining even more capabilities and assets to help customers succeed on their digital transformation journeys.”

Founded in 2002 and headquartered in Irvine, California, Neudesic has more than 1500 cloud and data experts across the USA and in India. It provides digital transformation services across advisory, application development, cloud migration, devops, integration, data engineering, data visualisation and hyper-automation.

Neudesic’s cloud and data consultants will join IBM Consulting’s hybrid cloud services business. Neudesic extends IBM Consulting’s skills and certifications across the hybrid cloud ecosystem including Microsoft, AWS, Google Cloud, Databricks, Snowflake, Denodo, Kubernetes, MuleSoft, RedHat, Salesforce, UIPath, SAP and Oracle.

“As a Microsoft Gold Partner with multiple Azure competencies, Neudesic is excited to enhance IBM’s hybrid cloud strategy with extensive Azure capabilities,” said Parsa Rohani, CEO of Neudesic. “The combination of our capabilities with IBM’s hybrid cloud vision and scale will drive even more impactful innovation for clients.”

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed. IBM and Neudesic signed a definitive agreement leading to this month’s acquisition in IBM’s fourth quarter 2021.