**Editor’s Note: Please click here for a recap of the biggest channel-impacting merger and acquisition news from July.**

Boston-based Cloud Technology Partners (CTP) is the latest company on the roster of acquisitions made by Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) this year. HPE’s impending acquisition of CTP is designed to strengthen the IT giant’s hybrid IT capabilities by expanding its consulting services.

HPE’s Ana Pinczuk

CTP, a born-in-the-cloud services company with experience in the enterprise, will become a part of HPE Pointnext, HPE’s IT services organization. The unit, introduced in March, promises to make hybrid IT simple and power the Intelligent Edge. Pointnext was formed by the combined HPE’s technology services consulting and support groups.

“Together, we will be even better positioned to capitalize on this [hybrid IT consulting and cloud native development] market trend. The CTP team has built strong customer momentum and will be able to accelerate that momentum by leveraging HPE’s global brand and go-to-market,” Ana Pinczuk, senior vice president and general manager, HPE Pointnext wrote Tuesday in a blog.

The hybrid IT consulting and cloud native development market segments, a $6 billion market today, are poised to grow at more than 18 percent, according to McKinsey and Co.. CTP is cloud-agnostic, with extensive experience on multiple platforms, such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google and OpenStack.

Pinczuk noted that a combined HPE-CTP will help IT organizations move to the cloud by helping them navigate application suitability for public and/or private cloud, and to execute migrations; the expanded consulting arm will also help clients use technologies such as IoT, big data and machine learning (ML); and, with its Managed Cloud Controls, a suite of next-generation managed services, CTP helps clients with governance, risk and regulatory compliance, while automating the reconciliation of cloud spend back to the projected TCO savings.

According to Chris Greendale, founder, chairman and CEO of CTP, the company had been looking for funding for the past six months, with the original intent of raising a “D” round of funding.

“During these discussions, it became clear that one party stood out from the rest,” he said.

“HPE provided us the opportunity to maintain our industry-recognized brand and rapidly scale through new revenue streams, new markets, larger and more diverse enterprise accounts, and additional human capital. Looking forward, we are excited to embark on this next phase to help shape HPE’s cloud strategy as they continue to focus on delivering the promise of the hybrid IT strategy and digital transformation,” Greendale wrote in a blog.

Eveline Oehrlich, who follows HPE as vice president and research director at Forrester, noted in her June reflections from HPE Discover that “Pointnext executives stressed the need to accelerate enterprise clients’ digital transformation endeavors and the customer journey, all in cooperation with partners such as Wipro and PwC, because they can and because the partners want to — very different from the times when HPE still had a huge enterprise services team.”

Other acquisitions HPE has made in 2017: SimpliVity in January, Niara in February, Pointnext in March, and also Nimble. One month later, HPE announced the spinoff and merger of its enterprise services business with CSC — a deal that was complete on Sept. 1.