IBM announced earlier this week that it has acquired Melbourne-headquarted SXiQ, a digital transformation firm specialising in cloud applications, platforms, and cybersecurity. While the terms of the deal weren't disclosed, SXiQ - formerly known as Southern Cross Computer Systems - has a good four decades in the industry and serves industries ranging across energy, telecommunications, retail, state and federal government and health - making it a pretty good deal on expertise and reach alone.

According to the announcement, SXiQ will join IBM Consulting's Hybrid Cloud Services business, with a focus on Australia and New Zealand. John Granger, Senior Vice President of Hybrid Cloud Services at IBM Consulting, said the acquisition is about SXiQ's hybrid and multicloud expertise and is intended to meet the market demand for hybrid cloud strategies.

"Companies are very clearly deploying hybrid cloud strategies as interoperability, security, compliance and avoiding vendor lock-in are top of mind," Granger said.

SXiQ is the latest in a string of high profile cloud consulting acquisitions IBM has made recently. In July, the tech giant acquired DevOps consultancy BoxBoat Technologies; six months earlier, in January, it had acquired Taos, ranked one of Silicon Valley's top cloud services providers by Gartner. And last December, IBM bought out Finnish cloud consultant Nordcloud.