IBM has acquired Gravitant Inc., a privately held developer of cloud brokerage software. IBM is mainly positioning the deal for corporate IT customers, but take a closer look and you'll find that Gravitant can transform channel partners like VARs and MSPs into cloud services brokerages.
Over the past five years or so, major technology companies, startups and IT distributors have been striving to launch cloud brokerage platforms for VARs, MSPs and cloud integrators. Gravitant is one such platform, thought there are plenty of alternatives (to some extent, names like AppDirect, Jamcracker and Odin from Parallels come to mind).
Decade-Long Journey
Founded in 2004, Gravitant is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and has development operations in Pune and Bangalore, India. The company's brokerage system works like this:
How VARs, MSPs Become Cloud Brokerages
Available as a white label solution to channel partners, the Gravitant cloudMatrix software platform offers five key benefits to channel partners, according to the company. They are:
- Dramatically shorten the time and effort needed to respond to Cloud RFPs;
- Capture and aggregate cloud infrastructure spend and gain volume discounts;
- Make consumption of your own value-added services easier;
- Improve your customers’ experience by delivering Just-in-Time IT; and
- Outpace your competition and grow your revenue faster.
Heavy Competition
The IBM-Gravitant deals sounds promising. The IT giant has reported falling revenues over 14 consecutive quarters, but CEO Ginni Rometty has been pushing to transform IBM via cloud, mobile, security and big data analytics solutions.
Still, IBM isn't alone in its march toward cloud services brokerages. Keep an eye on the IT distributor market -- especially over the next few days, as additional technology platforms may arise... Wink, wink.
