REAN Cloud Doubles Down On DevOps with Acquisition Of Opex Software

REAN Cloud scaled its business rapidly in just a few short years to become a powerhouse AWS partner, and with last week's acquisition of Opex Software seeks to establish itself as a dominant channel player in implementing DevOps solutions.

The born-in-the-cloud solution provider, based outside Washington, purchased Pune, India-based Opex, a DevOps specialist focused on the implementation of modern software development and deployment processes. The price of the deal was not disclosed.

The acquisition positions REAN to offer enterprises looking to embrace increasingly popular DevOps methodologies a complete package of infrastructure management and application deployment solutions, Sekhar Puli, a co-founder and managing partner of REAN Cloud, told CRN.

[Related: RightScale 2016 State Of The Cloud Report: A Look Inside The DevOps Revolution]

Founded only three years ago, the channel startup grew at breakneck pace, earning recognition as an AWS Premier partner about a year after opening its doors by focusing on a strategy of emphasizing differentiation around security to enterprise customers.

But where REAN specializes in deploying infrastructure and securely managing workloads, Opex is more application-centric, Puli said.

"We are focused on the monitoring and security aspect of the application, whereas they are focused on the deployment of the application," Puli told CRN.

Opex is also more technologically agnostic than REAN, and has under its roof high-level expertise in the HashiCorp and Docker ecosystems, he said. The company also boasts an impressive stable of customers, such as SAP, Teradata and Philips.

REAN's leadership believes the company's prominence in the AWS ecosystem will create opportunities to migrate some Opex customers to the world's largest public cloud, Puli said.

REAN Cloud was among the first batch of partners to earn Amazon's DevOps certification, complementing competencies in managed services and migration.

Like many partners bringing DevOps to market, REAN has seen a shift from a customer base largely unaware of the movement to combine software development and IT operations into seamless, integrated processes, to one demanding the benefits of those processes from the channel, Puli said.

"By and large, I can see the change almost on a month-to-month basis. Probably a year ago, not many people would even say DevOps. But now everyone wants to talk DevOps," Puli said. "But they all mean different things."

Some use the term when referencing continuous deployment and continuous integration processes, in which Opex specializes. Others are talking about the emerging concept of immutable infrastructure, in which the technology stack is built once and then left alone for every deployment.

The combined company will be able to offer both categories of DevOps solutions, Puli said.

And that's just a starting point for REAN Cloud.

"We are looking at a couple other acquisitions in the next couple months," he said, ones that would likely add regional expertise.