Update: LiquidHub 'just getting started' with 4th deal since fall

(Adds comments from CEO Brassington) LiquidHub, the Wayne-based "digital integrator" and IT outsourcing firm that has counted Novartis, SEI, Independence Blue Cross,Comcast, Vanguard and Subaru among its clients, has purchased New York-based Redkite, a cloud-consulting firm that specializes in fitting Salesforce.com software to corporate software users "through a proprietary client-focused approach." Terms not disclosed. 

Redkite employs 50 at its New York headquarters and offices in Atlanta, Denver, Minneapolis and Phoenix, bringing LiquidHub's total to around 1,600. Founders Brennan Burkhart and Kenny McColl will also join LiquidHub.

It's the third Salesforce consultant LiquidHub has bought this year: other acquisitions include Harvest Solutions (Albequerque, NM) and ClosedWon (Boston, San Francisco). LiquidHub raised $53 million last year from ChrysCapital and other investors, who also promised to back acquisitions with up to $100 million as LiquidHub founder Jonathan Brassington builds a multinational network.

LiquidHub claims revenues of more than $200 million, roughly doubled in the past 18 months. Brassington tells me specialized firms like his that help corporate clients fit Salesforce software to their needs together generate corporate billings estimated at over $40 billion a year, several times Salesforce.com's direct revenues.

The Redkite deal, with the preceding acquisitions, give LiquidHub the mass and reach to earn a designation as a Salesforce "Gold Partner," one of 19 in the U.S., 50 worldwide (corrected).

Besides offering the Salesforce platform-as-a-service (PaaS) in competition with Microsoft and other cloud-based service providers, LiquidHub also helps Salesforce service customer-relationship management software against enterprise software providers like Oracle and SAP, and Salesforce analytics in competition with Tableau, Radnor-based QlikTech, and other cloud-based analytics developers.

How far has LiquidHub reached into its acquisition treasury? "We are just getting started," Brassington told me. Since the company is profitable on a free-cash-flow basis, it can self-fund some of its acquisitions. Add last year's investor capital, "we are looking at some bigger deals:" maybe another digital marketing agency larger than Foundry9, which LiquidHub bought in October, maybe more analytics profiders.

Globant, a public company with services similar to LiquidHub, reports yearly sales in the $250 milllion range, yearly growth around 20%, and a market cap of around $600 milllion, Brassington noted. "This whole digital integrator space continues to be a very hot market."