Moving to expand its bench of Azure, Dynamics and Office 365 specialists, IBM acquired Microsoft cloud partner Neudesic. Terms of the deal, announced this week, were not disclosed. But like many companies Big Blue has acquired to add hybrid and multi-cloud skills, Neudesic is part of IBM Consulting.

Neudesic is a longtime, prominent Microsoft partner that is celebrating its 20^th anniversary this year. Based in Irvine, California, many of Neudesic’s 1,500 Microsoft cloud experts operate in India. Neudesic offers various Azure infrastructure and application development, modernization and integration services. Among them: migration, DevOps, data engineering and AI.

IBM’s John Granger

“Neudesic adds deep Azure cloud, data engineering and data analytics expertise to accelerate our clients’ hybrid cloud journeys,” IBM Consulting senior VP John Granger wrote on LinkedIn.

Granger added that the Neudesic deal builds on several acquisitions IBM Consulting has made over the past two years. They include Sentaca, SXiQ, BoxBoat, Nordcloud and Taos.

Through roughly a dozen acquisitions brought into IBM Consulting during the past two years, it has amassed certifications in AWS, Google Cloud Platform, Databricks, Snowflake, Denodo, Kubernetes, MuleSoft, RedHat, Salesforce, UIPath, SAP and Oracle. Neudesic will expand its Microsoft certifications as well, according to IBM.

Competing with Partners?

For now, Neudesic services will only be delivered by IBM Consulting, according to a spokesman. Anurag Agrawal, principal analyst with Techaisle, said IBM could be giving its partners a mixed message.

Techaisle’s Anurag Agrawal

“It shows that regardless of spinning off its managed services business as Kyndryl, IBM is still interested in building and growing its consulting practice to drive services revenue,” Agrawal said.

“The strategy harkens back to IBM’s history, the primary focus on services as a revenue generator, and is distant from moving to the contemporary as-a-service business model. The move should be to reduce conflict and not introduce newer conflicts,” Agrawal added.

Tier 1 Microsoft CSP

Nevertheless, the addition of Neudesic gives IBM an added and critical path to the Microsoft ecosystem. Among Neudesic’s key alliance partners: Citrix, Databricks, DocuSign and Nintex. Other Neudesic partners include AppDynamics, Perigine and Salesforce’s Tableau.

Neudesic has been a Microsoft Gold partner for 17 years, and it became one of Microsoft’s Tier 1 CSPs in 2020. Through the CPS program, Neudesic delivers around-the-clock support and proactive monitoring of Azure, Office 365 and Dynamics 365 environments. Microsoft has recognized Neudesic on numerous occasions. Most recently, Neudesic was Microsoft’s U.S. financial services partner of the year. In 2020, it was the U.S. customer experience partner of the year.

Like IBM’s other acquisitions of cloud service providers, Neudesic will maintain its brand and website. Paul Galvin, Neudesic’s director of application innovation, expressed optimism about the deal on LinkedIn.

“Among many things, this is a step on the path towards becoming the #1 Microsoft partner in the world,” Galvin noted. “Fun times ahead and lots of opportunity for me and my colleagues and for those of you out there interested in joining us at this very exciting time.”