EMC Buys Cloudscaling to Expand Cloud Offerings
EMC has purchased Cloudscaling in a deal that is being reported to be around $50 million. Cloudscaling describes itself as “The leading provider of on-premises elastic cloud infrastructure solutions to support dynamic applications.”
Cloudscaling is a startup that delivers agile solutions using OpenStack. Cloudscaling fits nicely into EMC’s portfolio based on the fact that EMC is trying to gain more market share in the OpenStack arena. Industry experts mention that EMC’s purchase of Cloudscaling is a direct shot at Cisco and their recent acquisition of Metacloud. EMC believes that it can use Cloudscaling’s technology in order to become one of the premier hybrid cloud solution.
Jordan Novet from VB commented on the deal saying, “Ultimately the EMC deal could have the effect of ensuring companies keep buying EMC gear even if they want to run OpenStack in their data centers and circumvent, say, VMware’s proprietary cloud software.”
Novet also notes that Cloudscaling is based in San Francisco and that the company has been around since 2006. Cloudscaling’s website mentions that it has customers such as Ubisoft, Internap and Lithium. Cloudscaling CEO Randy Bias will join the EMC team according to the terms of the deal. Bias is a pretty prominent figure within the OpenStack community and EMC believes that Bias will continue to carry the torch for the OpenStack community.
It should be noted that at one point, HP was considering buying out EMC. At this point in time, industry insiders feel as if that deal is off the table. Since HP has split into two divisions, with one focusing on cloud and enterprise, it seems as if EMC and HP will continue to compete against each other as EMC looks to beef up its line up of cloud based offerings. The acquisitions of Cloudscaling will help EMC gain a stronger hold on both public and private data centers.
