IBM Buys Storage Solutions Provider

IBM bought privately held Novus Consulting Group (NovusCG) of Manassas, Va., for an undisclosed sum in a deal finalized today.

NovusCG is now part of the Storage and Data Services division of IBM Global Technology Services, which earlier this year acquired Softek in a bid to strengthen its enterprise position.

NovusCG, founded in 2000, is a storage integrator and consulting company specializing in working with "super-enterprises" with multinational presence. It has just over 100 employees and claims to be managing over 25 Pbytes of storage in 60 data centers on five continents worldwide. Though commercial customers are unnamed, NovusCG claims to serve five U.S. government agencies, including the SEC and the Departments of Treasury, Defense, Homeland Security, and Health and Human Services. Partners include Brocade, Cisco, CA, EDS, EMC, HDS, HP, NetApp, Oracle, Sun/StorageTek, and Symantec, among others.

Co-founder and CEO of NovusCG, Sean Garvey, will join IBM's Storage and Data Services unit as a director of issue-based services, alongside Val Rahmani, GM of infrastructure management services. Garvey will report to IBM VP of storage and data services Paul Fried.

NovusCG, headquartered in the U.S., opened an office in London in June 2007. The company specializes in consulting to large enterprise accounts on issues related to reducing complexity and establishing best practices in large, heterogeneous storage environments. "In the IT world, storage is the eye of the storm," Garvey said on a call with reporters this morning.NovusCG uses software as part of its consulting engagements, and its flagship product is a package called Storage Enterprise Resource Planner (SERP), which was launched in 2006 and is in its fourth revision. NovusCG says the package correlates data on storage equipment utilization gathered from a range of devices with line of business, cost center, and geography metrics, in custom reports.

SERP is being used in four of the world's top 10 global financial organizations, according to NovusCG, though again, the firm won't provide names.

Another NovusCG product, ESP 3.0, features a Wiki-based portal that directs employees through the steps required to set up and manage storage and backup operations.

IBM hopes to add its strengths in compliance services and other forms of storage consulting to the NovusCG lineup in order to stifle competition for enterprise and mid-market accounts. "IBM's acquisition of NovusCG ups the ante in its battle against EMC in the storage marketplace," states an IBM representative in a prepared press note accompanying today's release.

The news comes on the heels of IBM's lackluster storage product revamp and news that IBM's storage systems earnings grew just 1 percent last quarter.IBM's services business, however, is robust, having grown 13 percent year-on-year in revenues last quarter. And Big Blue thinks it can provide the edge it needs in storage.

In early afternoon trading, IBM shares were selling at $112.36, down $2.32 (2.02%).

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