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N E W YO R K • B O S T O N • S A N F R A N C I S C O • WA S H I N G T O N D C • LO N D O N R E P O R T R E P R I N T Introduction Cloud management platform supplier CloudBolt Software, based in North Bethesda, Maryland, is acquiring Norcross, Georgia-based codeless integration and VMware vRealize Automation (vRA) specialist SovLabs. Terms of the deal were not disclosed. CloudBolt claims the acquisition doubles overall customer count to 160 and number of employees to 140. The products will be sold separately for now, but the idea is to offer an appliance model that can turn on and off the capabilities in both. Additional acquisitions are anticipated. 451 TAKE The opportunity for remaining an independent cloud management platform vendor is all about adjacency: expertise in generic cloud management tasks, plus some set of value-added activities, be it security, financial insight or developer enablement. With CloudBolt's acquisition of SovLabs, it's clear that Insight Partners is aiming to develop just such an asset in its cloud management investment. SovLabs enables CloudBolt to rotate toward the opportunity presented by solving integration complexity across multi-service cloud deployments. Initially focusing on a significant installed base of vRA customers that CloudBolt believes are an opportunity for it as VMware transitions between versions of the product in an upgrade cycle, it will also address applications for infrastructure-as-code, ITSM and container management that are becoming enterprise institutions. This is not the end game but rather a first move. Deal details and rationale CloudBolt will use SovLabs' codeless integrations to help its customers and vRA customers reduce the cost and risk of custom coding automation workflows required by tools that are becoming standard in the enterprise such as Terraform, Kubernetes and ServiceNow. In hybrid and multi-cloud deployments, organizations face challenges around automating infrastructure deployments and typically use custom code, custom scripts and custom integrations to mesh infrastructure with these applications. 451 Research found that 68% of enterprises executing digital transformation initiatives declare hybrid cloud (integrated on-premises systems and off-premises cloud/hosted resources) to be an explicit IT strategy. Terms of the deal weren't disclosed. CloudBolt says that while customers are seeking to take the complexity out of using multiple clouds, they are also trying to wrangle multiple back-end tools such as Hashicorp Terraform for infrastructure- as-code, Kubernetes for container orchestration and ServiceNow for IT service management and must typically integrate them with vRA with custom code. To meet what it sees as a growing need and opportunity for tools that can automate vRA integration, CloudBolt has acquired SovLabs, which provides codeless integration technologies for this. Snapshot Acquirer CloudBolt Software Target SovLabs Subsector Cloud management, integration Deal value Undisclosed Date announced 2-Jun-20

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