EMC Buys OpenStack Cloud Builder Cloudscaling

EMC has acquired Cloudscaling, a company that sets up private OpenStack clouds on hardware of customers’ choice in their own data centers that integrate with the major public clouds, such as Amazon Web Services and Google Compute Engine.

OpenStack is the most popular open source cloud architecture, and EMC is the latest incumbent IT vendor to join the ecosystem in a major way. Until now, its OpenStack play consisted of support for the architecture by its storage management software called ViPR.

Vendors like HP, IBM, Cisco and Oracle already have wide-ranging cloud strategies that revolve around OpenStack.

EMC spokesman Dave Farmer said the company made the acquisition to increase the variety of cloud technologies it supports. “To further extend our breadth of cloud platform support, including VMware and others, EMC has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Cloudscaling,” he wrote in an email.

Cloudscaling’s solution is targeted at enterprises. The company loudly advertises the fact that its private clouds sit behind customers’ firewalls, which is appealing to security- and compliance-conscious enterprises.

As such, it is a competing product to the proprietary cloud technology by VMware, in which EMC owns an 80-percent stake. VMware is going after the enterprise cloud market in a big way, and its hybrid cloud offering, called vCloud Air, competes directly with the type of hybrid cloud infrastructure Cloudscaling is pushing.

That EMC has made an acquisition in the OpenStack space regardless of VMware’s cloud strategy speaks to the level of importance the open source cloud technology has in the eyes of major enterprise IT vendors.

There also have been rumors that EMC leadership was considering parting with its stake in VMware.

EMC did not disclose the size of the Cloudscaling acquisition, but Bloomberg reported it was less than $50 million, citing anonymous sources. Farmer said the deal was “in the final run-up to closing.”