IBM is acquiring Turbonomic, an application resource management (ARM) and network performance management (NPM) software provider. Financial Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
This is technology M&A deal number 250 that ChannelE2E has covered so far in 2021. See all technology M&A deals for 2021 and 2020 listed here. Also, here’s a list of recent IBM acquisitions.
Potential MSP, channel partner and customer use cases for Turbonomic's software include application performance assurance, public cloud optimization and managing Kubernetes containers at scale, the seller says.
Turbonomic was privately held and venture funded ahead of the IBM deal. Among the funding milestones: Turbonomic apparently raised $70 million at a valuation of $963 million in September 2019, Prime Unicorn Index reported at the time.
Turbonomic Aligns With IBM Business Transformation
Turbonomic is the latest piece in IBM CEO Arvind Krishna's effort to pivot the enterprise technology provider toward multi-cloud software that drives business automation. Major software components in the strategy include Red Hat OpenShift and IBM Cloud Pak developments.
IBM is leveraging Red Hat OpenShift as a multi-cloud software platform to compete against VMware while pivoting away from head-on competition from Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure and Google Cloud Platform.
Turbonomic aligns with that strategy. The Turbonomic acquisition will provide IBM partners and customers with "full stack application observability and management to assure performance and minimize costs using AI to optimize resources – such as containers, VMs, servers, storage, networks, and databases," IBM says.
The deal also aligns with IBM's recent acquisition of Instana. Upon close of the acquisition, IBM plans to integrate Turbonomic's ARM software with the APM and real-time observability capabilities of Instana and the ITOps capabilities of IBM Cloud Pak for Watson AIOps, the buyer says.
In some ways, IBM also appears to be bolstering its competitive stance vs. New Relic, Datadog and other providers of application, infrastructure and cloud monitoring tools.
IBM Acquires Turbonomic: Executive Perspectives
In a prepared statement about the deal, Rob Thomas, senior VP of IBM Cloud and Data Platform, said:
"IBM continues to reshape its future as a hybrid cloud and AI company. The Turbonomic acquisition is yet another example of our commitment to making the most impactful investments to advance this strategy and ensure customers find the most innovative ways to fuel their digital transformations."
Added Dinesh Nirmal, general manager, IBM Automation:
"We believe that AI-powered automation has become inevitable, helping to make all information-centric jobs more productive. That's why IBM continues to invest in providing our customers with a one-stop shop of AI-powered automation capabilities that spans business processes and IT. The addition of Turbonomic now takes our portfolio another major step forward by ensuring customers will have full visibility into what is going on throughout their hybrid cloud infrastructure, and across their entire enterprise."
Concluded Ben Nye, CEO, Turbonomic:
"Businesses are looking for AI-driven software to help them manage the scale and complexity challenges of running applications cross-cloud. Turbonomic not only prescribes actions, but allows customers to take them. The combination of IBM and Turbonomic will continuously assure target application response times even during peak demand."
Turbonomic also has an OEM relationship with Cisco through Cisco Intersight Workload Optimizer. That relationship is expected to continue under IBM's ownership.
