VMwhat? Dell snaps up Cloudify for multi-cloud orchestration

Intriguing move – just look at the software companies it has ditched...

Dell has confirmed it's buying cloud orchestration company Cloudify to give its own cloud services biz a shot in the arm and appeal more to organizations investing in DevOps.

It's an interesting move, as Dell has spent most of the past several years offloading its portfolio of software companies, including those with cloud skills. Quest Software, which included the assets of both SonicWall and pre-Dell Quest Software was sold in 2016, while the Boomi integration platform was shown the door in 2021, as was cloud and virtualization giant VMware.

The deal is estimated to be worth $100 million, although the company didn't confirm its value.

The Texan tech maker told The Reg: "Dell Technologies announced that it has completed the acquisition of Cloudify. This transaction allows Dell to continue to innovate our edge offerings.

In addition, a Form S-8 [PDF] filed with the US Securities And Exchange Commission (SEC) has come to light entitled "Cloudify Platform Ltd. 2017 Share Incentive Plan" that relates to shares of the Dell Technologies Class C common stock issued to Cloudify employees as part of the takeover.

Cloudify develops a multi-cloud orchestration platform designed to enabled applications to run across multiple cloud or datacenters, with the ability to automate DevOps processes. It has features for managing cloud-native workloads and more across hybrid environments.

The company's platform is based on technology developed by in-memory computing specialist GigaSpaces, which spun out Cloudify as a separate business in 2017.

With many organizations adopting a multi-cloud strategy over the past several years, IT services providers have sought to build tools and tech that help customers to integrate and manage the disparate cloud services they find themselves operating.

Dell has also been created its own Apex-as-a-service portfolio of managed infrastructure services, including servers, storage, networking and more. The company expanded these last year with specific multi-cloud capabilities, including data services to provide file, block, object and data protection services across all major public clouds, and has continued to add more capabilities.

Dell's president for its Infrastructure Solutions Group Jeff Boudreau precviously said the reality of multi-cloud was complex, with data becoming distributed across on-premises, multiple public clouds and edge datacenters, claiming that "all this uniquely positions Dell to help customers take control of their multi-cloud strategy."

We asked Dell for further details regarding its acquisition of Cloudify and how this would fit with its multi-cloud strategy, and we will update when we get a substantial response. ®