CA buys cloud consulting company

Buy is made in recognition that cloud migrations aren't all plain sailing

Betting that moving to the cloud won't be as easy as vendors promise, CA Tecnologies has bought 4Base, a consulting firm that helps companies adopt and implement the cloud.

"The rise of boutique consulting firms focused on cloud and virtualisation tells you that there's a need here," wrote Jay Fry, vice president of business unit strategy for CA, in a blog post about the acquisition.

The companies did not disclose the terms of the deal.

4Base has worked on more than 300 projects, CA said, and includes eBay, T-Mobile and Visa among its customers.

4Base will become the nucleus of a new group in CA called the Global Virtualisation and Cloud Consulting Team. Based on 4Base's experience, the group will offer assessments of virtualization capability and operational readiness for virtualisation, strategy assessments and cloud-based advisory services.

The acquisition will also help CA start engaging with customers earlier in their planning processes, not just when they need help installing software, Fry said.

He argued that despite all the buzz about the simplicity of the cloud, businesses are already noticing that it's complex to use and implement the cloud. Some fall into the "virtual stall" as they get stuck in the midst of virtualisation rollouts, he said.

"While it's true that no one's looking for complexity, we know that complexity is with us in current, more traditional IT environments. As we get early cloud computing implementations off the ground, I don't think we have much choice: complexity will follow IT to the cloud (and back) as well," he wrote.