IBM has snapped up 11-year old cloud brokerage services firm Gravitant Inc. for an undisclosed sum, in order to bolster the management capabilities and efficiency of its hybrid environments for enterprise customers, it said on Tuesday.

Gravitant offers technology that enables the integration and management of mixed public and private clouds from multiple providers. IBM plans to integrate its solution with its Global Technology Services division, where it’ll be sold as a Software-as-a-Service offering.

One of the most useful solutions Gravitant offers is its hybrid cloud “brokerage” software that allows customers to compare and buy software and computing services from multiple suppliers across hybrid clouds. The service allows customers to buy directly from within the Gravitant portal, and once purchased, those software services can be managed and offered as-a-service via the same console.

Big Blue stated its belief that the enterprise shift to hybrid clouds is creating a demand for vendors to offer a menu of options for managing the cloud environments they offer.

“The reality of enterprise IT is that it is many clouds with many characteristics, whether they be economic, capacity or security,” said Martin Jetter, IBM’s senior vice president for Global Technology Services, in a statement announcing the acquisition. “Gravitant provides an innovative approach to add choice and simplicity to how enterprises can now manage their environments. It will be a key component as we broaden our hybrid cloud services.”

The Gravitant acquisition comes just a week after IBM concluded a deal to acquire data assets from The Weather Company, a move designed to flesh out its hybrid cloud strategy and help build more data-intensive cloud applications. IBM is desperate to attract more customers to its cloud in order to boost revenues from its cloud infrastructure and software services units and offset the decline in growth it’s seeing in other areas of its business.

Cloud brokerage platforms like Gravitant seem to be in high demand these days, what with Red Hat Inc. acquiring Ansible Inc. last October to boost its own hybrid management capabilities, and VMware Inc. and Cloud Cruiser Inc. both expanding their product portfolios with upgraded hybrid management and visibility.

Industry analysts concur the market is a hot one. International Data Corp. recent said it expects the “cloud systems management software” market to grow to $8.3 billion by 2019, while Gartner Inc. said the “cloud brokerage enablement” market will hit $2 billion by 2018.

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