Pivotal buys another software development agency, Neo

Pivotal, a company that sells cloud and big data software and offers agile software development services for other companies, announced today that it has acquired Neo, a small independent software development agency.

This is Pivotal’s third acquisition in just two months, following Slice of Lime, a user experience design agency, and CloudCredo, a company that specialized in deployments of the Cloud Foundry software that Pivotal supports.

“The Pivotal Labs approach has had a strong influence on Neo from its very inception. Neo is deeply aligned with Pivotal’s Agile software development and Lean Startup methodologies,” Pivotal’s managing editor Stacey Schneider wrote in a blog post. “Their results-driven approach emphasizes experimentation―helping clients define, design, and build product by testing it in-market to create true customer value.”

Neo started in 2012 and was based in San Francisco, with additional offices in New York and Singapore. The company picked up business from Adobe, AT&T, eBay, Singapore’s federal government, and Time Inc.

Neo’s founder, Ian McFarland, spent seven years at Pivotal Labs (which EMC acquired in 2012) as principal and vice president of technology before striking out to build a consultancy of his own.

“When Neo began, our goal was to push the envelope for how lean startup, cross-functional teams, and agile could be combined for better results. Over the last several years, we accomplished a lot, not just for our clients, but also in how people thought about innovation. However, we recognized that a bigger platform was needed for the kind of impact Neo hoped to achieve,” the company wrote in a message on its website.

“Pivotal provides that platform, and today Neo shuts its doors and becomes part of the Pivotal team. In many ways, this is a story about coming full circle. Through our founder, Ian McFarland, many of our values came directly from Pivotal, and so this feels like a natural completion of the loop.”

Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.