The direction of Hewlett-Packard Enterprise's cloud strategy is coming into sharper focus with its acquisition of Cloud Cruiser, maker of analytics software for managing and metering private and hybrid cloud deployments.
The Cloud Cruiser acquisition comes just days after HPE announced it would pay $650 million for SimpliVity, maker of "hyperconverged" appliances that combine storage, compute and networking, in another move to strengthen its hand in hybrid cloud.
Cloud Cruiser had already been used by HPE for it's Flexible Capacity private cloud offering. HPE SVP Scott Weller explained the rationale for the deal in a blog post:
[W]hile some workloads may be right for the public cloud, others – which may require higher security, compliance and service levels – are best kept on-premise. Because of these different needs, HPE helps organizations take a hybrid approach to IT. But how can business leaders enjoy the same IT-as-a-service model when employing a mix of public cloud and on-premise IT?
Flexible Capacity, a strategic and high-growth component of HPE’s Technology Services portfolio, offers customers on-premise IT infrastructure with cloud economics. It enables our customers to manage IT infrastructure in their own data center but pay for it as-a-service.
A critical piece of HPE Flexible Capacity is measurement – the ability to accurately meter and bill for customers’ consumption of IT– that differentiates Flexible Capacity from other offers. Cloud Cruiser’s consumption analytics offerings enable enterprises such as Microsoft, TD Bank, NTT, Ford, KPN and of course HPE to measure, analyze, optimize and control their usage and spend in private, public and hybrid cloud environments.
Cloud Cruiser has hooks into Microsoft Azure, Amazon Web Services and Google Cloud Platform, allowing customers to analyze their consumption and spending for each service. While there are ample options for multi-cloud management tools in the market, Cloud Cruiser's niche is squarely in the financial realm, versus aspects such as provisioning and monitoring.
"This is about building a private cloud and using Cloud Cruiser's assets to monitor, measure and chargeback," says Constellation Research VP and principal analyst Holger Mueller. "The Cloud Cruiser capabilities will help HPE to build a more manageable, measurable and scalable private cloud."
HPE plans to discuss the deal further during a conference call on Thursday.
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