Highlights:

  • Companies that need to handle numerous infrastructure management platforms can benefit from Cloudify’s products.
  • It’s an intriguing acquisition for Dell, whose presence has long been firmly established in the market for on-premises data centers.

Recently, Dell Technologies Inc. disclosed that it had secretly purchased Cloudify Ltd., a company that offers cloud orchestration solutions to businesses.

Cloud architects and DevOps teams employ Cloudify’s capabilities to manage software containers, workloads, and other elements of multicloud information technology environments.

Dell didn’t officially announce the acquisition itself for an unspecified reason. A renowned media house, which first reported the story, estimates the deal’s worth at roughly USD 100 million. Sources with knowledge of the transaction first reached out to the media house, and the publication then came across a Form S-8 filing Dell submitted with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission detailing some of the share awards Cloudify workers received due to the transaction. Finally, Dell issued an email confirming the acquisition.

The company stated, “Dell Technologies announced that it has completed the acquisition of Cloudify. The transaction allows Dell to continue to innovate our edge offerings.”

In 2017, the startup company Cloudify was established in Tel Aviv after being separated from the in-memory computing firm GigaSpaces Technologies Inc. It describes itself as a provider of open-source DevOps automation technology and provides a platform called “environment-as-a-service.”

Companies that need to handle numerous infrastructure management platforms can benefit from Cloudify’s tools. For example, a business might manage its on-premises services using VMware Inc.’s vSphere virtualization technology and support its public cloud deployments with Kubernetes.

An overarching orchestration layer can connect these management platforms using Cloudify’s software. As a result, administrators and DevOps teams can control their on-premises and cloud-based infrastructure from a single portal. Cloudify’s platform bundles infrastructure, networking, and automation solutions into verified blueprints to manage heterogeneous environments at scale with automatic provisioning and updates.

With partners including Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services Inc., F5 Inc., Microsoft Corp., Wind River Systems Inc., and ServiceNow Inc., the company has grown rather popular due to these capabilities.

It’s an intriguing acquisition for Dell, whose presence has long been firmly established in the market for on-premises data centers. However, during the past few years, Dell has developed a cloud strategy dependent mainly on its new Apex-as-a-service solutions and public cloud integrations, both of which were introduced in January 2022. The company wants to integrate its products with public cloud service providers like AWS, providing both standalone software for public clouds and its hardware in the cloud of the customer’s choice.

Holger Mueller of Constellation Research Inc. stated, “Just when you thought Dell’s cloud story was starting to fizzle out, it goes and takes everyone by surprise with the acquisition of Cloudify, a provider of some extremely useful cloud orchestration tools. We’ll have to wait and see how Dell integrates Cloudify with the rest of its portfolio, but it looks like it could soon start writing a new chapter in the application management and DevOps space.”

According to Rob Enderle of the Enderle Group, Dell is particularly adept at acquisitions due to its deliberate approval and industry-leading operational merger processes, as well as the fact that it vigorously defends the assets it purchases. He claimed that, as a result, its acquisitions typically provide value to both Dell and the target firm.

Enderle said, “The acquisition of Cloudify is focused on Dell strengthening its services business. It turns Dell into an even stronger solutions provider for public and private cloud opportunities, and has the potential to make its Apex effort a far more powerful initiative.”