Red Hat Acquires ManageIQ for Enterprise Cloud Management

Red Hat Inc., the commercial open-source software company, announced its acquisition of ManageIQ for approximately $104 million in cash. The transaction is set to close in the first quarter of 2013. ManageIQ is an enterprise cloud management and automation software provider based in New Jersey. ManageIQ's software is said to enable business organizations to deploy and manage private clouds, virtualized infrastructures, and virtual desktops from only one console.

This new acquisition is set to strengthen Red Hat's portfolio of cloud-based solutions. The open-source enterprise Linux company is expected to expand the capabilities of its enterprise-grade hybrid cloud management platform as a result of this recent acquisition.

With ManageIQ's acquisition, Red Hat's suite of open hybrid cloud management solutions will then include Red Hat CloudForms (a hybrid cloud IaaS solution), Red Hat Enterprise Virtualization (a virtualization management solution), and ManageIQ's Hybrid Cloud Operations Management Tools (a cloud operations management solution for enterprises).

Aside from its history of supporting Red Hat technology, ManageIQ touts how it addresses certain critical issues faced by growing cloud service providers. One, ManageIQ handles both private and public cloud platforms. And two, its cloud-based IT management is said to unify both enterprise and cloud services under a single console, minimize integration complexity, and do away with "tool sprawl."

"Industry and customer response to Red Hat's vision for the open hybrid cloud has been overwhelmingly positive because it offers the best of both worlds: the ability to tap into the public cloud when and where it makes sense, while leveraging existing investments for cloud infrastructure," said Paul Cormier, president of Products and Technologies at Red Hat. "For enterprise cloud initiatives, effective cloud management is critical. ManageIQ offers robust features, including orchestration, policy, workflow, monitoring and chargeback, that deepen Red Hat's cloud management capabilities and bring the promise of open hybrid cloud a step closer for the industry."

"We are very excited to be joining Red Hat," said Joe Fitzgerald, Chief Product Officer and co-founder of ManageIQ. "Our strong virtual and cloud management solutions, highly differentiated technology and experienced team are a perfect fit with Red Hat. We share a common vision of cost effective, open and automated deployment and management of enterprise IT cloud resources."

The holiday season has been marked by several acquisitions of companies that deal with enterprise cloud structures. Dell bought Credant, a cloud security vendor, while Oracle acquired Eloqua, a cloud marketing automation company. (KOM) Link. Link. Link.