Cisco is bulking up its hybrid cloud technology portfolio. The networking giant kicked off the month today by announcing that it is acquiring CliQr Technologies, a San Jose, Calif.-based provider of application-centric hybrid cloud management software in a deal worth $260 million.
“Customers today have to manage a massive number of complex and different applications across many clouds. With CliQr, Cisco will be able to help our customers realize the promise of the cloud and easily manage the lifecycle of their applications on any hybrid cloud environment,” said Rob Salvagno, vice president of Cisco Corporate Development in a March 1 announcement.
CliQr co-founders Gaurav Manglik and Tenry Fu, both formerly of VMware, founded the company “to provide a uniquely easy and powerful way to make cloud computing simple and application-centric – a platform to model, deploy and manage the entire lifecycle of applications onto any data center or private or public cloud environment,” wrote Manglik in a blog post today. “For the past five years we have delivered on our vision by developing and deploying our CloudCenter platform for our worldwide enterprise-class customers to manage their move to today’s hybrid IT environments.”
CliQr’s CloudCenter technology creates a single application profile that can be securely deployed to data centers and clouds, whether public or private. The approach enables enterprises to maintain consistency in their access control and security policies, regardless of where their workloads reside.
CloudCenter works with leading cloud providers, including Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, Google Compute Platform, IBM SoftLayer and Rackspace. It also supports OpenStack, CloudStack and VMware vCloud private clouds.
On the IT budgeting front, CliQr’s platform delivers price and performance data, enabling businesses to weigh the economic impact of their cloud decisions. Finally, CliQr provides consolidated management across applications, clouds and users.
CliQr already supports Cisco’s Application Centric Infrastructure (ACI). Cisco plans to integrate CliQr into the rest of its data center solutions portfolio, the company said.
“We share a common vision and great product synergy that drives application relevancy throughout disparate and ever-changing IT environments,” Manglik stated. “Together we are truly poised to transform the datacenter. When CliQr becomes part of the Cisco team, we will make an even bigger impact in driving efficiencies, security and management of hybrid cloud IT for our mutual customers.”
The companies expect the deal to close in the third quarter of Cisco’s fiscal year 2016, or by April 30.
Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at Datamation. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.
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