IBM to Purchase APM Startup Instana

Tech giant IBM is acquiring APM startup Instana as it continues to expand hybrid cloud vision.

Instana, founded in 2015, is an applications performance management startup that can help IBM build on its internal management tools, giving it a way to monitor containerized environments running Kubernetes.

The company hopes that by acquiring Instana, it can give customers a way to manage complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments.

The companies did not reveal the purchase price.

“Our clients today are faced with managing a complex technology landscape filled with mission-critical applications and data that are running across a variety of hybrid cloud environments – from public clouds, private clouds and on-premises,” said Rob Thomas, senior vice president for cloud and data platform.

According to Thomas, Instana will help ease that load, while using machine learning to provide deeper insights.

“The combination of Instana’s next generation APM and Observability platform with IBM’s Hybrid Cloud and AI technologies excited me from the day IBM approached us with the idea of joining forces and combining our technologies,” said Instana CEO Mirko Novakovic in a blog post announcing the deal.

Novakovic wrote, “In the context of the changes I described above I cannot be more excited about this announcement. IBM has the best enterprise Kubernetes platform with Red Hat OpenShift and a huge footprint in the Open Source community including the Cloud Native Foundation – also one of the drivers of open observability standards like Prometheus or OpenTelementry. IBM also is an innovator and leader in AI and AIOps with their Watson technology. The combination of Instana’s next generation APM and Observability platform with IBM’s Hybrid Cloud and AI technologies excited me from the day IBM approached us with the idea of joining forces and combining our technologies.”

He added, “My team and I are looking forward to become part and work with IBM teams and build the most advanced AIOps and Observability solutions in the market to help our customers to automate their day-to-day and to make sure developers get out of the burnout zone, so that they can focus on innovation and developing great software delivering tangible business impact!”

IBM CEO Arvind Krishna recently told CNBC’s Jon Fortt, that they are betting the farm on hybrid cloud management with their Red Hat acquisition at the center.

“The Red Hat acquisition gave us the technology base on which to build a hybrid cloud technology platform based on open-source, and based on giving choice to our clients as they embark on this journey. With the success of that acquisition now giving us the fuel, we can then take the next step, and the larger step, of taking the managed infrastructure services out. So the rest of the company can be absolutely focused on hybrid cloud and artificial intelligence,” Krishna said.

Disclaimer: We have no position in any of the companies mentioned and have not been compensated for this article.