Dell, the PC vendor that its founder is bidding to take private, has acquired Enstratius, a maker of enterprise cloud management software that counts Amazon, VMware and Rackspace among its customers. The value of the deal was not disclosed.
The acquisition of Enstratius, which makes high-end software for the management of single and multiple clouds, is a tacit acknowledgement by the hardware giant that the market is shifting away from PC and enterprise hardware into cloud computing, which may affect Dell's future growth.
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Enstratius helps organisations manage applications across private, public and hybrid clouds, including automated application provisioning and scaling, application configuration management, usage governance, and cloud utilisation monitoring, according to Dell.
Enstratius's technology is available as software-as-a-service or as on-premises software, enabling full control from within a customer's data centre or via a hosted service. Enstratius currently supports more than 20 public and private cloud platforms, including OpenStack, VMware, Rackspace, Amazon Web Services and Windows Azure, with the added flexibility to easily add new clouds.
The company claims to simplify the cloud management task with a self-service catalogue, design tools and management tools that help customers create and deploy multi-component applications across one or more clouds. It is also "cloud agnostic", enabling customers to choose from a wide variety of public and private cloud providers, including Dell and non-Dell clouds.
Dell claims that cloud management is a key strategic priority for the company as a result of "customers' rapid adoption of cloud-based applications and the compelling array of cloud deployment models".
It continues: "Enstratius brings Dell cloud infrastructure management for public, private and hybrid-cloud deployments and complements the capability Dell recently acquired from Gale Technologies, now Active System Manager (ASM), by providing enhanced multi-cloud management and application configuration capabilities.
"Enstratius also builds upon Dell Software's strong portfolio of technologies such as Foglight performance monitoring, Quest ONE identity and access management, the Boomi integration platform, and data protection offerings such as AppAssure and NetVault to create a stronger systems management portfolio that enhances multi-cloud management."
"As enterprises increase their use of public, private and hybrid clouds, the need for controls, security, governance and automation becomes more critical," said Tom Kendra, vice president and general manager, systems management, Dell Software.
