Meg Whitman
HP Enterprise is acquiring Cloud Technology Partners (CTP), a consulting company that helps Fortune 500 customers migrate workloads to Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform and OpenStack. Financial terms were not disclosed.
CTP's expertise includes helping customers move to the cloud; innovate in the cloud and operate in the cloud, HPE said.
CTP had been exploring potential funding in recent months, but the deal with HPE became the logical path forward, CTP CEO Chris Greendale said:
"Over the course of the past six months, CTP’s leadership team explored various funding routes, each with its own benefits. Our initial intent was to raise a “D” round of funding. During these discussions, it became clear that one party stood out from the rest.
Today I am thrilled to announce that Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has completed a definitive agreement to acquire Cloud Technology Partners."
HPE CEO Meg Whitman also sent a letter of congratulations, welcoming CTP employees to HPE.
CTP: Familiar Acronym and Executives
CTP’s executive leadership team includes some familiar names. Indeed, the current Cloud Technology Partners company includes many of the leaders from the former Cambridge Technology Partners — an IT consulting firm that was prominent in the 1990s.
CTP's former owners and investors include Rackspace, which pumped money into the consulting firm in 2016. At the time, Rackspace said it would work with CTP to promote AWS-oriented:
- Cloud strategy and economics
- Security and governance
- Application portfolio assessment
- Application modernization, migration and development
- DevOps and automation
- Ongoing cloud operations and managed services
Potential Channel Conflict
HPE recently spun off much of its consulting services as part of a CSC deal that formed DXC Technologies. However,HPE still had its own Technology Consulting Services group. Now, CTP pushes HPE back deeper into consulting.
Although CTP focuses at the high-end of the market, the deal runs the risk of competing with HPE's channel partners and global alliance partners -- including DXC, Accenture and Capgemini, among others.
