Microsoft has snagged another company in its relentless quest to become the preferred cloud for enterprises, even among those that run some of their IT workloads on rival cloud platforms.
Back in April, there were rumblings from Israeli news media that Microsoft was interested in acquiring Cloudyn, a multi-cloud monitoring and budgeting specialist, for a reported $50 million to $70 million. Today Microsoft made it official by announcing that it had inked a deal to acquire the privately-held firm, although the companies didn't disclose the financial terms.
Cloudyn, which provides visibility into business' multi-cloud environments, is an existing Microsoft Azure technology partner. The company was among the first to use the Azure Usage API (application programming interface) and Azure RateCard API, offering customers improved visibility into the cost of running workloads on Microsoft's cloud.
The Cloudyn platform provides a single dashboard that enables IT executives and managers to monitor cloud environments that span multiple providers, including Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, and of course, Microsoft Azure. Cloudyn also supports OpenStack and Docker cloud containers.
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In addition to the solution's budget tracking and visibility enhancing capabilities, Cloudyn generates recommendations that help organizations better align their costs with actual cloud utilization, potentially yielding significant savings.
"As a Microsoft partner, Cloudyn has supported cost management for Microsoft Azure and other public clouds, helping customers continuously improve their cloud efficiency, said Jeremy Winter, director of Program Management at Microsoft Azure Security and Operations Management, in a June 29 announcement. "Cloudyn customers have been able to optimize their cloud services usage and costs through automated monitoring, analytics and cost allocation," continued Winter. A Fortune 500 firm achieved a 286 percent ROI (return on investment) using Cloudyn, he claimed.
The deal is expected to close after it is approved by regulators. Meanwhile, the companies are getting ready to add Cloudyn's technology to the ever-growing Azure ecosystem of enterprise cloud offerings.
"The Cloudyn solution will be incorporated into Microsoft's product portfolio—offering customers the industry's broadest set of multi-cloud management, security and governance solutions," wrote Sharon Wagner, the founder and CEO of Cloudyn, in a separate blog post.
The Cloudyn buy follows the recent acquisition of Deis, a San Francisco-based startup. In April, Microsoft announced it was acquiring the Kubernetes specialist in a bid to grow its cloud container solutions portfolio. Founded by Google in 2014, Kubernetes is a popular open-source container management and orchestration system that has quickly gained the support of several IT and cloud heavyweights.
Deis was an early supporter of the Cloud Native Computing Foundation's Kubernetes Managed Service Providers (KMSP) certification program. It also made a name for itself by spearheading a number of open-source projects, including the Helm package manager for Kubernetes and Steward, the Kubernetes-native service broker. The company also devised Workflow, a self-service app management solution aimed at DevOps teams.
Microsoft reported it had closed on the transaction on April 21. Financial terms were kept under wraps.
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