Mergers and Acquisitions, CSPs, IT management, Content, Private equity

Cloud Cost Management Tools: Flexera Acquires RightScale

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Software asset management (SAM) company Flexera has acquired RightScale, a multi-cloud management and cost optimization specialist. Financial terms were not disclosed, and Flexera did not discuss staffing or executive plan for the RightScale assets.

Among Flexera's key goals: Help customers get their public cloud spending under control. "Public cloud spend is growing rapidly and our customers have been very clear on their desire to manage public cloud costs with Flexera, just like they do for desktop, datacenter, SaaS and other IT assets," said CEO Jim Ryan.

Self-service cloud systems have allowed technology and business leaders to quickly select and launch new applications and infrastructure. RightScale's own State of the Cloud Report shows that customers typically leverage three or more cloud vendors. But that flexibility and speed to market for customers has also led to unchecked cloud costs in some companies. As much as 35 percent of cloud spending involves wasted dollars, according to a Gartner report.

RightScale's History

RightScale, founded in 2007, was one of the original firms to offer multi-cloud management alongside cost optimization capabilities.

The company promotes the following two platforms to IT service providers:

  • RightScale Optima, a collaborative cloud cost management and optimization solution that enables partners to take automated action to reduce customers' cloud spend across the enterprise, RightScale asserts.
  • RightScale Cloud Management Platform, a solution that enables MSPs to deliver access to a portfolio of public, private, and hybrid cloud services for customers.

Several RightScale rivals have been gobbled up through M&A activity in recent years. To  keep pace, the company has raised $62.1 million over its lifetime, and partnered with such giants as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, IBM Cloud, OpenStack, and VMware vSphere.

RightScale’s orchestration features can automate actions identified by other Flexera solutions, making for a solid coupling, according to RightScale’s CEO and Co-founder Michael Crandell.

Still, competition remains fierce. Companies like Cloudyn, Cloudability, and ParkMyCloud -- also offer cloud cost management tools.