Today’s cloud industry is defined by diversity: more infrastructure and application options, more cloud services, and more management and ops tools than ever before. But for the companies that can accelerate their multi-cloud strategies, the payoffs are significant. Multi-cloud is now a strategic advantage. The ability to build and deploy on any cloud; the flexibility to access innovation from every cloud; all while operating securely and efficiently from the data center to the cloud to the edge is defining the next generation of the cloud industry.
Cloud automation is a cornerstone of any successful cloud strategy. It makes cloud faster, simpler and in many ways safer. It helps customers work across clouds while minimizing complexity, risk, and inefficiency. That’s why VMware vRealize has experienced massive adoption and is so highly rated by industry watchers. Businesses recognize the benefits of end-to-end infrastructure automation, but we also see the value in extending automation beyond infrastructure to apps. That’s why today we are excited to announce VMware is acquiring SaltStack to significantly broaden its software configuration management and infrastructure and network automation capabilities. Once closed, SaltStack will help us to complete our automation story, enabling us to extend our automation capabilities beyond infrastructure to the entire application stack. This will include the software and packages inside virtual machines and containers. These software configuration management capabilities will help us address the full spectrum of customers’ automation needs and further strengthen customers’ ability to automate the deployment and configuration of infrastructure platforms both on-premises and in the cloud with VMware vRealize Automation. Additionally, SaltStack offers robust configuration compliance and vulnerability management capabilities, which will enable VMware vRealize to help customers address their SecOps practices, after close.
Our philosophy around cloud consumption and programmable provisioning has been to offer customers as much choice as possible. Today, VMware vRealize supports Puppet, Ansible and Terraform. We are committed to supporting those integrations. We also believe that many vRealize customers will benefit from an end-to-end automation solution with integrated configuration management, which we intend to deliver following the close of the SaltStack acquisition.
SaltStack CEO Marc Chenn shared his thoughts with us on the combination of VMware and SaltStack: “For the last eight years, SaltStack has worked tirelessly to build intelligent, scalable and future-proof automation solutions that help organizations control and secure their IT infrastructure. As VMware paves the way for the multi-cloud future, automated cross-cloud orchestration and configuration management will be an integral part of multi-cloud’s strategic advantage. VMware and SaltStack, together, will forge a more robust foundation for the future of cloud innovation, which starts today with this thrilling announcement.”
SaltStack’s product is built on a foundation of popular and healthy open source projects. This is one of the most compelling aspects of SaltStack. VMware believes that open source software promises faster time to market, expanded access to innovation, and increased developer productivity. Open source powers innovation. VMware invests in, contributes to, and builds on open source — so that customers can deploy more innovative, interoperable, scalable, and secure solutions with confidence. VMware is committed to continuing SaltStack’s work on their projects after close and, with the help of SaltStack’s community leadership, VMware will support and invest to help grow the community.
VMware is excited about the opportunities this acquisition will create for customers and partners and we look forward to welcoming Marc, Tom Hatch and the SaltStack team to VMware.
Ajay Singh is Senior Vice President & General Manager, Cloud Management Business Unit , VMware
