CA Technologies acquisition of a consulting firm gets to the heart of what happens to companies when they begin to adopt virtualization technologies.
Andi Mann of CA makes the point in a blog post that the company acquired 4Base Technologies to provide companies with the expertise that is often required to really get the most out of virtualization.
Here’s what happens. A company deploys virtualization. They reap the benefits but then they get a bit stuck. To deploy a virtualizaiton infrasrtucture requires expertise that many companies do not have. For CA, 4Base will be the company that helps customers fill that void.
The acquisition also points to another issue. And that’s adoption. Or should we just call this what it is. And that’s politics. CA is even more blunt. They point to “server huggers,” those members of the IT guard that often have a lot of doubt about virtualization and developing a cloud infrastructure.
4Base will be chartered with going into enterprise companies and helping with staffing and skills issues. The idea is to get people on board who can handle the complexities of making the transition to virtualized environments. That again helps ease the political issues. More informed people do make a difference.
There are other aspects to this deal that tell a story about the politics of IT. 4Base brings expertise. For instance, CA cites 4Base and its knowledge of the wide array of hypervisors. This includes VMware, Microsoft, Sun, IBM, Citrix, Red Hat and other platforms. Again, the knowledge exists outside the customer walls. That knowledge needs to move inside. Once that knowledge is in place, the political tensions subside to some degree.
We don’t think this is a departure for CA. We see it as a necessary factor of doing business in the enterprise and the company’s increasing focus on the cloud and SasS offerings.
CA competes with companies such as IBM, Hewlett-Packard and Oracle. Like IBM, CA is on an acquisition tear. It bought 3Tera and Nimsoft earlier this year, showing its clear intentions to get into the cloud computing market.
