Hewlett-Packard Co. (HP) is buying cloud-computing software developer Eucalyptus Systems.
Founded in 2009, Eucalyptus provides technology that lets companies store, process and deliver computing data via the Internet.
The Goleta, California-based company has raised $55.5 million in three financing rounds. Hewlett-Packard is paying less than $100 million, according to a person with knowledge of the situation.
HP is the world’s second-largest seller of server computers and is seeking to add customers that are setting up their own cloud networks.
As part of the acquisition, Eucalyptus CEO Marten Mickos will join Hewlett-Packard as senior vice president. He takes over as general manager of Hewlett-Packard’s cloud-computing business, replacing Martin Fink, who previously led the cloud unit and will remain as Chief Technology Officer and director of HP Labs, the Palo Alto, California-based company said in a statement today. Mickos will report directly to Whitman.
Hewlett-Packard’s cloud-computing hardware, software and services are sold under the name HP Helion and compete with Internet-hosted services from Amazon.com, Google, and Microsoft Corp., as well as software sold by VMware, Citrix Systems, Red Hat and others.
Eucalyptus’s open-source software is designed to let administrators manage corporate data centers in the same way they would run cloud-computing services from Amazon. Eucalyptus offers broad support for Amazon’s application programming interfaces, or APIs, which let computers exchange data with each other in a common language.
HP Helion products are based on OpenStack, a different cloud-computing software standard that has its own set of APIs. Mickos said in early August that he wanted Eucalyptus to become more involved in OpenStack.
Source: Oregon Live
