With Bluewolf Acquisition, IBM Continues Its Push to the Cloud

IBM is growing its Interactive Experience division, which sits within its Global Business Services group. Big Blue announced today the acquisition of Bluewolf, a global consulting agency named by IDC as a worldwide leader in the Salesforce implementation system. The $200 million deal comes on the heels of its acquisition of CRM provider Optevia earlier this month and its $3.6 billion purchase of Truven Health Analytics in February, continuing a string of aggressive acquisition activity designed to position IBM to better compete in a cloud-based market.

IBM hopes to capitalize on the Salesforce professional services industry, which Salesforce projects at $111 billion. According to Bluewolf CEO Eric Berridge, Bluewolf became Salesforce’s first consulting services partner in 2001. “Now, I believe we have the perfect alliance as part of the IBM iX team — equally sharing our passion, discipline and desire to be a global leader in the Salesforce partner ecosystem with the scale, skills and expertise of IBM iX to catapult us there,” he said in a release.

The acquisition strengthens IBM’s presence in the financial services, healthcare, manufacturing, higher education, public sector, new media and other industries. Bluewolf will continue to develop Salesforce-specific solutions based on its current library of assets and accelerators.

“There is no question that the consumer-grade experience has emerged as a fundamental element in modern business strategy,” said Bridget van Kralingen, senior vice president, IBM Global Business Services. “Meeting that expectation defines next-generation differentiation and competitive position, and with Bluewolf, we add expertise to scale that capability to the cloud-based capabilities of Salesforce.”