IT automation specialist OpsRamp will become part of HPE's GreenLake portfolio, adding hybrid cloud visibility and notification tools to the IT conglomerate's SaaS offerings.
HPE is acquiring AIOps specialists OpsRamp, enabling new automation and visibility capabilities for IT ops teams within the tech giant's GreenLake platform.
OpsRamp's technology will be bundled with existing HPE GreenLake offerings and sold as a standalone GreenLake product to customers. The transaction is expected to close before the end of July. Further financial details were not disclosed.
GreenLake already has some tools for IT operations monitoring. But the OpsRamp technology will include visibility capabilities for third-party infrastructure including other vendor hardware and cloud services, according to HPE executives.
The buy comes years after HPE spun out and sold off its enterprise software business, which included some IT ops tools before interest and sales in the SaaS market took off, according to Gregg Siegfried, an analyst at Gartner.
"They certainly have a history in this space. But at one point they decided to get out of it completely," Siegfried said. "Now that [SaaS] is eating the world, they've got to establish trust. Given the history, it's something [IT buyers] are going to think about."
Merging with market traffic
OpsRamp, founded in 2014 and based in San Jose, Calif., sells IT operations management SaaS products focused on network discovery, monitoring tools and event resolution with automated capabilities. The company received money from Hewlett Packard Pathfinder venture capital investments in 2020.
The OpsRamp platform includes machine learning to prioritize incident and event management. The platform has also been used to automate IT workflows and develop network topology maps. The company has primarily sold to MSPs and has shifted to channel partners more recently. Comparable products to OpsRamp include LogicMonitor, Datadog and SolarWinds.
HPE GreenLake provides a portfolio of standalone and SaaS products for hybrid and multi-cloud enterprise customers as well as those with extensive on-premises data centers that want a private cloud. HPE claims GreenLake currently supports more than 65,000 customers.
"GreenLake is a hybrid story, and OpsRamp is a good overlay for that," Siegfried said.
Last exit
The acquisition could leave some of OpsRamp's MSP and channel partners in the cold if they aren't willing to partner with HPE, as the vendor could be classified as a competitor, said Naveen Chhabra, an analyst at Forrester Research.
OpsRamp can do more than HPE GreenLake needs.
Naveen ChhabraAnalyst, Forrester Research
"You might see some concern from existing OpsRamp customers because they are HPE competitors to a certain extent," Chhabra said. "[But] it would not raise the eyebrows of a risk management professional."
He doesn't expect HPE's prior divestment from visibility and automation tools to affect new buyers' decisions should OpsRamp become part of the GreenLake portfolio.
"While [IT ops] was a capability HPE had, it was all for traditional infrastructure," Chhabra said. "OpsRamp is all about SaaS service."
HPE's own network and stack monitoring tools for GreenLake are built on the OpsRamp platform, Chhabra said. But he felt both companies would benefit from keeping the OpsRamp platform available outside of internal tools or GreenLake buyers.
"OpsRamp can do more than HPE GreenLake needs," he said. "HPE would not benefit to keep it as an integrated [product]."
Tim McCarthy is a journalist living on the North Shore of Massachusetts. He covers cloud and data storage news.
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