M&A Madness: It's Not A Game

 
CRN Magazine
By Steven Burke, CRN March 23, 2012

Solution providers staying pat during the current M&A frenzy could find themselves left standing in what is turning out to be the business equivalent of musical chairs.

This M&A madness is anything but a child’s game. It’s all about making an almost unimaginable business transformation to a world where businesses are buying IT as a service. …




Cover via Amazon

Nicholas Carr, the IT futurist, had it right in his book “The Big Switch,” which compared the current IT-as-a-Service phenomenon to the move by companies 100 years ago to stop building their own power sources and instead move to the electric grid. Today’s transformation, however, does not mean that every business will move outright to the IT-as-a-Service model. There will be plenty that maintain a hybrid model, building their own private clouds and relying on the public cloud for some services. But the economic forces that are reshaping the solution provider marketplace are moving at a breakneck pace.

Solution providers are looking closely at whether they have the right business model and technical talent to make it in this new world. …




Diagram showing three main types of cloud computing (public/external, hybrid, private/internal) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

For my money, the more interesting deals are those aimed at cloud computing IT services superiority. GreenPages, for example, which began making big cloud computing investments long before it was fashionable, recently acquired cloud MSP LogicsOne. The deal comes as GreenPages is set to shake up the market with an enterprise hybrid cloud management offering.



Breakdown of Cloud Computing Services (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

 
“Everything we do is around infrastructure transformation, turning internal IT into a service platform, getting apps and data cloud-ready so customers can move to a new paradigm,” said GreenPages CEO Ron Dupler. “Everything we do is around the cloud.” Even without LogicsOne, GreenPages’ cloud services business is growing at a 30 percent clip. Add LogicsOne to the party and it takes the GreenPages cloud services story to another level. …




Cloud Computing visual diagram (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

These type of scale-up deals bringing together best-of-breed cloud computing service providers should worry companies that are staying pat. The IT services phenomenon means that solution providers need to, in one way or another, go big or go home.

BACKTALK: Are you going big? Reach out to Steven Burke via e-mail at steven.burke@ubm.com

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