Hewlett Packard Enterprise has announced the acquisition of yet another partner, this time scooping up cloud management biz Morpheus Data for an unspecified sum.
The startup has described its cloud management platform (CMP) has been at the heart of HPE's GreenLake service since 2022.
"With the acquisition of Morpheus Data, we will take the next major leap to make HPE GreenLake cloud the de facto platform for innovating across hybrid IT," HPE CTO Fidelma Russo said of the move.
Morpheus is focused on managing multi-cloud environments with hooks for the core virtualization technologies like Microsoft Azure Stack Hub, KVM/OpenStack and VMware ESXi among others.
Morpheus also partners with Dell, Lenovo and Amazon Web Services as a CMP for the firms' various hybrid and private cloud offerings. We're told HPE will honor those existing deals, of course - no reason to lose that additional income from your competition.
HPE and Morpheus have been working together for years, with the pair most recently announcing a partnership in early 2022 to integrate Morpheus' hybrid CMP into GreenLake, which HPE called at the time a way to "provide an as-a-service model to overcome hybrid cloud management challenges" in GreenLake.
But as we so often ask in OEM acquisition moments; with many of Morpheus' capabilities already being a part of HPE GreenLake, why acquire the company?
- Brit watchdog gnawing on HPE's $14B buy of cable giant Juniper Networks
- HPE seeks $4B in damages from Autonomy boss Mike Lynch and his ex-CFO
- HPE intros virtualization solution it says is totally not targeting grumpy VMware customers
- Competition is decreasing in enterprise IT – and you'll be poorer and dumber for it
"At a high level, our acquisition of Morpheus Data is about two things: expanding our multicloud management capabilities within HPE GreenLake cloud and combining our complementary capabilities in areas like FinOps, self-service provisioning, and application lifecycle management to accelerate roadmaps," HPE spokesperson Victor O'Brien told us in an emailed statement.
O'Brien confirmed the existence of several Morpheus products in HPE's private cloud portfolio, but said there's more that can be done by bringing the firm in house.
"There are many untapped capabilities that we anticipate will accelerate not only our Private Cloud, but HPE GreenLake cloud roadmap," O'Brien said. FinOps capabilities that already exist in GreenLake as a part of HPE's managed services offerings will be able to combine with OpsRamp telemetry features and Morpheus' metering tools to simplify cloud spending optimization, O'Brien cited as an example.
OpsRamp, which HPE acquired last year, will also combine with Morpheus to "automate applications lifecycle management" thanks to what the HPE spokesperson said is Morpheus' ability to observe and optimize apps earlier in their lifecycle than what OpsRamp has visibility into.
Additionally, O'Brien mentioned Morpheus' "nearly 100 codeless hybrid cloud integrations" as a way to simplify app provisioning and hybrid cloud management beyond what GreenLake can offer.
HPE declined to share the terms of the deal. The transaction is expected to close early in HPE's fourth quarter, which began on August 1 and runs through the end of October.
Once combined, it's not clear whether Morpheus will continue as a brand, with O'Brien telling us HPE plans to integrate Morpheus' solutions into the HPE GreenLake cloud. Branding plans will be developed once the deal closes. ®