IBM today announced that it has acquired Gravitant, Inc., a privately held company that develops cloud-based software to enable organizations to easily plan, buy and manage, or “broker,” software and computing services from multiple suppliers across hybrid clouds. With such capabilities, mixed environments of private and public clouds can begin to be integrated and digitally managed as one for greater performance and efficiency. With the Gravitant solutions everyone from IT managers to authorized employees can review and purchase compute and software services from different suppliers, as well as compare capabilities and pricing, all through a single, central console. Once purchased, the technology can be offered as a service and managed from the same console for greater efficiency and visibility into how the services are being used.

"The reality of enterprise IT is that it is many clouds with many characteristics, whether they be economic, capacity or security,” said Martin Jetter, Senior Vice President, Global Technology Services, IBM. “Gravitant provides an innovative approach to add choice and simplicity to how enterprises can now manage their environments. It will be a key component as we broaden our hybrid cloud services."

IBM plans to integrate the Gravitant capabilities into the IBM Global Technology Services unit. In addition, IBM Cloud plans to integrate the capabilities into Software-as-a-Service offerings, extending the company’s growing hybrid cloud solutions and capabilities.

“IBM is the leader in hybrid cloud and enterprise IT services and our technology will advance our clients’ experiences as well as bring new capabilities to IBM’s base,” said Mohammed Farooq, Chairman and CEO, at Gravitant. “Together, we’ll be able to help more enterprises manage their expanding private and public cloud environments.”

Founded in 2004, Gravitant is headquartered in Austin, Texas, and has development operations in Pune and Bangalore, India.

Financial details of the deal were not disclosed.