Managed services News
Joseph F. Kovar
Octo is a well-regarded brand. They have some experience of being a creative leader, working with the government, and being a good place to work. Also, we are a sub-contractor to Octo on a number of projects, and they have subcontracted it to us. We have a strong relationship now. And we are very competitive. At the federal level, businesses compete and collaborate. There’s a lot of collaboration,’ says Susan Wedge, IBM Consulting’s managing partner for the US government and public sector.
IBM on Wednesday unveiled the planned acquisition of Octo and will become part of the IBM Consulting group in a statement to expand its reach to federal government clients looking to transform their their IT systems.
No funding has been provided for the acquisition, which is expected to close before the end of the year. Arlington Capital Partners bought a majority stake in Octo in 2019.
IBM Consulting has a long history of working with federal government clients to help solve their digital transformation challenges, and it sees in Reston, Va.-based Octo a way to build its talent base to better serve those clients, said Susan Wedge, managing partner for the public sector and federal government at IBM Consulting.
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Wedge told CRN that Octo is an IT modernization and digital services company that is 100-percent government-owned and has 1,500 employees. “When we bring it into IBM Consulting, we’ll have about 4,200 consultants focused solely on the federal government,” he said.
Octo brings IBM Consulting agile development, SecOps (security operations), DevOps, and low- and no-code capabilities, Wedge said.
“Combined with what we already have, this can extend our work even better,” he said.
Octo also houses a 14,000-square-foot R&D center called oLabs that is essentially a co-creation center open for use by its employees and its national customers, Wedge said. It can be used by third parties to collaborate on solutions, he said.
“IBM has a lot of collaboration centers in the US,” he said. “Oct expands that network. And the Octo co-creation center focuses exclusively on federal government clients.
IBM Consulting has known Octo for some time, Wedge said.
“Octo is a good brand,” he said. “They have a lot of experience in thought leadership, working with the government, and it’s a great place to work. Also, we are a sub-contractor to Octo on a number of projects, and they have subcontracted it to us. We have a strong relationship now. And we are very competitive. At the federal level, businesses compete and collaborate. There is a lot of mixing. “
IBM Consulting, ranked No. 8 in CRN’s 2022 Solution Provider 500, works directly with federal customers and through business partners, including IBM solutions providers.
Before Octo, IBM made three other acquisitions for its IBM Consulting business.
IBM acquired Dialexa in September, 2022 for its cloud technologies.
The company acquired Neudesic in February 2022 as a way to expand its Azure cloud, data engineering, and data processing capabilities.
At the beginning of last year, IBM also announced the acquisition of Taos for its business services and cloud storage.
Joseph F. Kovar
