IBM Corp. said today it’s expanding its cloud financial operations capabilities after announcing its plan to acquire Kubecost, a startup focused on Kubernetes environment cost management.
The company didn’t disclose what price it’s paying to buy Kubecost, officially known as Stackwatch Inc., but it’s the latest in a string of acquisitions involving related companies.
Founded in 2019, San Francisco-based Kubecost is the creator of a cloud-based service that helps organizations to monitor and optimize Kubernetes clusters that host the components of modern applications. It’s designed to ensure those clusters are making the most efficient use of their computing resources to enable better cost management.
Kubecost’s flagship product is called Kubecost Cloud, which is based on the open-source OpenCost project. It provides developers and engineering teams with actionable and accurate cost-related data for Kubernetes installations, plus various other tools that can help to reduce the expense of running that software. It can be deployed inside any Kubernetes cluster, where it tries to find ways to reduce running costs without any impact on application performance.
This focus on efficiency aligns with IBM’s broader efforts in the area of FinOps. In June 2023, IBM acquired a startup called Apptio Inc., a provider of tools that ingest data from various financial, operational, and billing systems to deliver a fact-based understanding of technology cost, quality and value.
Prior to that acquisition, IBM also opened its checkbook to buy startups Turbonomic Inc. and Instana Inc., which are also focused on cloud cost optimization. Moreover, in 2019, Apptio itself bought another startup called Cloudability Inc., which specializes in tracking multu-cloud costs.
IBM said Kubecost’s capabilities will be integrated into an expanding FinOps Suite, enhancing the combined capabilities of Apptio, Cloudability, Instana and Turbonomic to provide what will perhaps be the most comprehensive cost monitoring toolset around. The company didn’t say so, but there is clear potential for Kubecost’s technology to be integrated with IBM’s OpenShift application development platform too.
Prior to today’s acquisition, Kubecost had raised $25 million via a Series A funding round led by Coatue Management in 2022, following on from its $5.5 million seed round one year earlier.
Kubecost co-founder and Chief Executive Webb Brown expressed excitement about the acquisition. “We started with Kubernetes cost monitoring, and we’ve proudly become the most widely adopted solution in the cloud native ecosystem,” he said. “Now, as a result of this merger, we’re poised to accelerate our mission by delivering broader, end-to-end cost management solutions to teams everywhere.”
Brown appeared on theCUBE, SiliconANGLE’s mobile livestreaming studio, in January 2022, where he discussed the OpenCost project in more detail, explaining how it has helped some companies reduce their Kubernetes spending by up to 80%: