Cisco to Buy Cloupia to Boost UCS Automation

Cisco Systems today announced its intent to acquire Cloupia, a software company that automates converged data center infrastructure. Cloupia speeds the deployment and configuration of physical and virtual infrastructure from a single management console. The Cloupia acquisition aligns to Cisco’s strategic goals to develop innovative data center, virtualization and cloud technologies, as well as gives it some talent. The Cloupia team is joining Cisco’s data center group led by David Yen, senior vice president.

The acquisition will help extend the converged management benefits of the Cisco Unified Computing System (UCS) Manager and UCS Central beyond just compute, to include server, network, storage and virtualization functions. The goal is to simplify IT admin operations and improve overall reliability in system deployment, through a single platform for automation.

Cisco introduced the Unified Computing System (UCS) in 2009. UCS is widely implemented by several  cloud and managed hosting providers, so this acquisition should be of note.

Through Cloupia, Cisco is extending the management of parts of its UCS system.  Cisco has been focused on converged infrastructure solutions that treat and manages as a whole system rather than individual components. The problem Cisco has identified and is trying to solve is that many IT administrator tools still only addresss part of the puzzle, and work is still heavily reliant on manual operations.

The acquisition fits into Cisco’s automation stategy. Its data center products allow IT admins to rapidly provision apps across bare-metal and virtual environments, with automated processes based on policy throughout the entire lifecycle. Cisco has made many previous acquisitions in cloud management, such as Tidal, LineSider and NewScale. The acquisition of Cloupia also complements Cisco’s Intelligent Automation for Cloud (IAC) solution.

Cloupia’s products will integrate into the Cisco data center portfolio through UCS Manager, UCS Central, and Nexus 1000v; It strengthens Cisco’s overall ecosystem strategy by providing open APIs for integrations. This acquisition will help provide single pane of glass management across Cisco and partner solutions including FlexPod, VSPEX, and Vblock.