To take advantage of the increase in demand for agile development, operations, and technology delivered as a service, Pythian, a provider of data management consulting and services, has acquired Blackbird.io, a DevOps and data services provider. With the addition of Blackbird.io’s team, Pythian says it is becoming the largest open-sourced database managed services company in the world.

Blackbird.io, formerly PalominoDB and DriveDev, helps customers speed development and improve operations. It offers integrated 24/7 operations and systems management with a focus on cloud and database technologies.

The company’s expertise in cloud, infrastructure as a service (SaaS), platform as a service (PaaS), big data, MySQL, NoSQL, and enterprise infrastructure ecosystems, combined with a focus on operational essentials, including orchestration, configuration management, operational visibility, continuous delivery, and 24/7 operations management, is expected to add value to Pythian’s portfolio of service offerings.

“While businesses still rely heavily on in-house infrastructure for database needs, we see the acceleration towards a SaaS model as cloud and mobile apps grow more powerful and offer viable alternatives,” said Andrew Waitman, CEO at Pythian. “As adoption of SaaS increases, a rapidly growing proportion of the demand for the world’s leading data and infrastructure expertise becomes embedded in a DevOps delivery model. The acquisition of Blackbird.io is key to our long-term strategy to aid the growing service-based markets.”

The Blackbird.io San Francisco office will become Pythian’s first West Coast location. Laine Campbell, CEO of Blackbird.io with expertise in MySQL, Cassandra, and Oracle, will lead Pythian’s open source database group, comprised of Pythian and Blackbird.io’s MySQL, PostgreSQL, Cassandra, MongoDB, Couchbase, and Hadoop operations and engineering professionals. Aaron Lee, Blackbird.io’s CTO, will lead Pythian’s DevOps business transformation and delivery group.

For more information on Pythian, go to www.pythian.com.