DevOps1 acquires Innablr in a bid to compete with GSIs

Alex Rea, CEO at DevOps1 said this acquisition will help the company compete at scale.

Australian consulting firm DevOps1 has acquired Innablr in a bid to be a local competitor to the global system integrators (GSIs).

The deal combines DevOps1’s knowledge in cloud, security and engineering with Innablr’s decade of cloud, data and platform engineering depth to deliver transformation at scale.

Acquiring Innablr has brought DevOps1 staff count to 130 and the company has plans to double that number within the next two years. All staff will retain their jobs as the company builds at scale.

Alex Rea, CEO at DevOps1 told CRN Australia why they acquired Innablr.

“Innablr has very deep engineering skills in data and AI and cloud that brings additional firepower to the group,” he said.

Through this acquisition, Rea said it will help them compete at scale, bring deep financial services experience, additional capacity in Melbourne, and levelling out national delivery engineering strength.

“Our hypothesis is that outside the Big 4 and GSIs there is few mid/large scale deep engineering consultancies at scale left that haven't been acquired,” he explained.

“Such as Versent, CyberCX, Servian, that can support the upcoming transformation towards AI, which we believe will impact all in cloud, data and security skills. We want to continue to scale to fill that gap.”

Rea explained how their customers will benefit from this acquisition.

“[We now have] greater engineering depth and breadth, meaning we can compete with specialisation at scale,” he added.

Rea said, “[From this acquisition we want to] provide a platform for other potential organisations to join to become an Australian engineering powerhouse.”

Innablr CEO Dan Hornby said he met Rea through a mutual connection and quickly recognised that joining forces would accelerate their ability to compete for larger, more complex engagements.

“With DevOps1 based mainly in Sydney and us in Melbourne, the geographic fit was clear. Just as importantly, our service lines complemented each other, with cloud, engineering, data and security coming together to create a compelling offering”, Hornby said.

“Innablr has always been about using the latest technology available to enable our customers to innovate faster and with more confidence as they decide their technology roadmap. We see deep data and security expertise as a key enabler to successful adoption of cloud native technologies, no matter which hyperscaler our customers are using.”

“With DevOps1, we believe the combined reach of both companies grows exponentially, thanks to both teams bringing perfectly matched capabilities.”

DevOps1 has offices in Sydney and Melbourne, some of its customers include Allianz, Toyota Finance, Optus, and Vocus.