GlassHouse Technologies, a global provider of independent IT infrastructure consulting services, today announces it has acquired UK-based virtualisation infrastructure consulting company, Systems Group Integration (SGI). The acquisition broadens GlassHouse’s existing virtualisation capabilities by combining vendor experience with analysis tools, helping customers realise ROI, increase efficiencies and reduce carbon emissions in their IT environments.
SGI has specialised in Microsoft and virtualisation technologies for over 15 years. Its services and solutions for all aspects of distributed IT architecture will be integrated into GlassHouse’s existing and complementary platform business to help customers build effective, service centric infrastructures and realise ROI on their virtualisation investments. The timely acquisition responds to increased customer demand for wide scale adoption to include server, desktop and storage virtualisation over the coming years.
The move will also increase the depth of GlassHouse’s vendor relationships to optimise GlassHouse consultants’ access and knowledge of the very latest product developments. GlassHouse remains completely vendor independent and will use vendor information, alongside its Transom™ methodologies to advise customers on the best strategies for individual business needs.
The acquisition will also strengthen GlassHouse’s relationship with partners such as Dell; both SGI and GlassHouse are approved Dell partners, with SGI being a preferred partner for virtualisation practice. GlassHouse partners will now have access to its broader virtualisation resources as well as expertise in storage, back up, data centres, security and managed services.
Mark Shirman, GlassHouse President and CEO comments; “GlassHouse has been operating in the virtualisation space for a number of years now, and has seen an increase in the large-scale data center projects leveraging virtualisation to create a greener and more efficient environment. SGI brings experience and IP to GlassHouse that broadens existing capabilities ensures that customers are implementing the right virtualisation strategy with a measurable ROI for their particular business needs. This will also contribute significantly to GlassHouse’s consistent growth and will strengthen our position in the market into 2010 and beyond.”
Tony Lock, Programme Director at analyst firm, Freeform Dynamics comments; ”Virtualisation is maturing beyond the testing and trial phase and is now addressing more areas within the data centre. It is clearly gaining momentum in enterprise-level companies as businesses are recognising the benefits it brings. These include improved energy efficiency, better resource management, improved ROI and, when well executed, enables IT to help the business be more effective, without adding to staff workloads. The acquisition of SGI by GlassHouse reflects this trend and holds the potential to deliver a wider range of infrastructure virtualisation expertise to client organisations.”
About GlassHouse
GlassHouse Technologies is a global provider of data center infrastructure consulting services. Focused on data center consolidations, virtualization, security, storage, data protection and managed services, GlassHouse consultants offer a vendor-independent approach to architect, implement and operate IT environments that drive high performance and agility through cloud computing and a service provider model.
GlassHouse transforms infrastructures to deliver high value services that align to business needs, enabling cloud computing and accelerated return on investments while mitigating operational inefficiencies and risk. This is provided through Transom, a unique delivery framework comprised of proprietary software tools, methodologies and domain expertise. Visit the GlassHouse blog for expert commentary on key data center issues facing today’s enterprises and follow us on twitter at #GlassHouse_Tech.
