HPE Acquires Cloud Cruiser In Stepped Up Flexible Capacity Hybrid Cloud Pay-As-You-Go Offensive

Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) stepped up its hybrid cloud offensive on Monday with the acquisition of Cloud Cruiser, the maker of a highly regarded cloud IT consumption, metering and analytics platform.

HPE said the acquisition of the six-year-old, San Jose, Calif. software maker would be a significant boost to its Flexible Capacity services program.

The Flexible Capacity services offering allows customers to buy HPE private cloud infrastructure as a service based on the same monthly, fixed-fee, pay-as-you-go model that has fueled public cloud adoption. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

[Related: Cloud Cruiser Moves Up The Stack With First SaaS Product For Cloud Monitoring]

HPE is already Cloud Cruiser's largest customer. "This acquisition marks additional investment in HPE Flexible Capacity, to further differentiate and strengthen this high growth service," said HPE Vice President of Technology Services Support Scott Weller in a blog post.

Bob Venero, CEO of Future Tech, a Holbrook, N.Y.-based HPE partner, said the deal would be a big boost to the hybrid cloud Flexible Capacity offering.

"This is a necessary tool that we need to give companies flexible and on-demand private cloud," he said. "Flexible and on-demand offerings are much more prevalent in corporate America."

For most corporations, putting mission-critical data at risk in the public cloud is not an option, said Venero. Those customers are looking for flexible, pay as you go usage models for private clouds.

Kelly Ireland, founder and CEO of Orange, Calif.-based CB Technologies (CBT), an HPE enterprise software partner, said the deal complements CBT's private cloud solution, which has a built-in option for HPE Flexible Capacity. "This acquisition provides customers the ability to look at their cloud options with more data and intelligence," she said.

When the transaction closes, Weller said, Cloud Cruiser will become an essential part of the Data Center Care portfolio within the Technology Services Support organization.

Cloud Cruiser co-founder and CEO David Zabrowski, who served as VP and General Manager of HP's Enterprise Computer Organization from 1997-2002, will report to Weller.

"Flexible Capacity, a strategic and high-growth component of HPE's Technology Services portfolio, offers customers on-premise IT infrastructure with cloud economics," said Weller. "It enables our customers to manage IT infrastructure in their own data center but pay for it as-a-service. This reduces the risk of organizations investing too much – or too little – in IT, eliminates unused capacity, and frees up valuable IT resources for new value-adding projects."