Red River Adds DevOps, Docker Expertise With Acquisition

New Hampshire-based solution provider Red River Friday said it has acquired the Texas consultancy Ambonare in a deal that will increase Red River’s holdings in the Lone Star State, as well as give it greater capabilities in moving customers to the cloud.

Ambonare, Austin, Texas, has significant expertise around application development, cloud computing, DevOps and Docker, Red River CEO Jeff Sessions told CRN.

“They’ve done things to make Docker faster and easier for the customer so they can get to the cloud quicker,” Sessions said. “That’s their specialty. That’s one of the things that attracted us to them because our customers are looking at Docker and containerization more specifically, as a way they want to move to the cloud, as opposed to a big forklift.”

Ambonare’s skill sets include mobile and web application development, software product engineering, cloud migration and application modernization, all of which Sessions said Red River can put to use.

“If you’re going to work on bringing an application up to the cloud, think about how large and widespread that application can be within your environment,” he said. “To take it and forklift that application up into the cloud is difficult. What Docker allows you to do is take pieces of it, containerize it, put a wall around it, work on that and move it up to the cloud … Our customers are really interested in it. This allows it to happen with less disruption to their business.”

The 375-employee Red River has been working on federal government contracts, some in Texas, for several years, Sessions said. The company opened an office in Austin – joining its offices in Claremont, N.H., Boston, New York, and Washington, D.C. – last year.

“We have been driving our business in Texas for quite a while,” Sessions said. “We have a big lab down there, massive programs that we’ve been doing within the federal government, and this just solidified our hand a little bit in Texas … We’ve been doing business in Texas for years. A lot of it started with the veterans administration. Their big centers are down there. Its been a part of our DNA. But its been growing and over the past five years its been growing significantly.”

The purchase of Ambonare continues Red River’s long-term growth strategy, Sessions said, which included its previous acquisitions of Sacramento-based Natoma and Boston-based Accunet. Over the past several years, Red River has increased annual revenue; expanded its geographic footprint, capabilities and customer base; earned multiple OEM awards and grew its contract portfolio to more than $125 billion in value, he said.

“Things have been going exceptionally well,” Sessions said. “We’ve been growing better than relative to the market. The acquisitions are assisting, but our organic growth is there. Everything we have attempted over the last couple years with the plan is coming to fruition. We have significant plans for the future. Growing. Getting better and better. “