Why Did Microsoft Add BlueStripe to Its Acquisition Portfolio?
Microsoft Adds BlueStripe: Continues Its Acquisition Spree
Microsoft completes the BlueStripe acquisition
On June 10, 2015, Microsoft (MSFT) added another company to its burgeoning acquisition portfolio. This time, Microsoft acquired BlueStripe—an application management technology provider. The financial details of the BlueStripe acquisition weren’t disclosed. BlueStripe Software allows enterprises to monitor and troubleshoot applications deployed across disparate operating systems, data centers, and cloud environments.
BlueStripe Software will ease the applications’ move to “cloud”
BlueStripe Software has an application and transaction monitoring software—FactFinder—as the above presentation shows. It enables companies to have end-to-end monitoring of the server, application, and performance across both the platforms. It finds, maps, and monitors complex applications that run across IT infrastructure—be it physical, virtual, or cloud.
Within the cloud space, Amazon (AMZN) continues to lead with a 28% market share, followed by Microsoft and IBM with a 10% and 7% share, respectively. Google (GOOG) and Salesforce.com (CRM) were the other players who made it on the top five list of cloud players.
BlueStripe’s funding details
According to CrunchBase, BlueStripe has raised $13.5 million since its inception in 2007. In July 2014, it got $525,000 debt financing. BlueStripe’s investors include Trinity Ventures and Valhalla Partners.
BlueStripe Software supports open platform
Since early 2015, FactFinder supports “Docker.” It’s an open platform for developers and system administrators to deploy and manage lightweight software containers. Through containers, developers can readily assemble components without bearing the overhead of VMs (virtual machines). As a result, BlueStripe now enables IT operations teams to monitor and manage application components that employ containers as part of their all-inclusive application deployment process.
Since BlueStripe maps the structure of distributed applications, it enables the process of upgradation of applications as well as their migration to the cloud platform.
BlueStripe would become part of Microsoft’s System Center and OMS (operations management system). We’ll discuss how it will contribute to these divisions later in this series.
According to Mike Neil, Microsoft’s general manager of Enterprise Cloud, stated that “We will discontinue selling the BlueStripe solutions in the near term while we work on these updates, although we will continue to support existing BlueStripe customers during this time.”
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