Inside Bluewolf Group, IBM’s Latest Cloud Acquisition

IBM (IBM) has continued to pursue its acquisition strategy and ended March 2016 by announcing that it plans to buy Bluewolf Group. Bluewolf Group is an independent services firm that specializes in Salesforce’s (CRM) cloud services. With ~500 employees, Bluewolf has a presence in the United States, Europe (EZU), and Australia (EWA). Although IBM didn’t disclose the financial details of the deal, Re/code shared that IBM paid more than $200 million for Bluewolf Group. IBM stated that with Bluewolf under its umbrella, IBM has now made ten cloud-related buyouts this year.

Bluewolf, a Salesforce partner since 2002, has delivered more than 9,500 projects. Its customers include Stanley Black & Decker, Vodafone Hutchinson Australia, and Sapa Building Systems. Before Bluewolf, in mid-march 2016, IBM announced the acquisition of Optevia, a UK-based company that specializes in SaaS (software-as-a-service) CRM (customer relationship management) solutions.

According to HFS Research, Bluewolf, Accenture (ACN), Deloitte, Capgemini lead the industry’s first Salesforce Services Blueprint. In 2015, HfS Salesforce Services Blueprint placed Bluewolf in its “Winners Circle,” far ahead of IBM in execution and innovation parameters.

According to IBM, Bluewolf acquisition will “uniquely position IBM for both midmarket and enterprise clients in the Salesforce professional services industry, projected at $111 billion.”

Now let’s take a closer look at why IBM became so interested in Bluewolf.