Microsoft Acquires £9m Application Management Startup BlueStripe

Microsoft has acquired application management firm BlueStripe Software, a company that helps enterprises manage applications across a multitude of operating system, data centre and and cloud environments.

Financial details of the buyout were not disclosed, but BlueStripe has reportedly raised $13.5 (£9m) million since its 2007 founding.

“We have worked with Microsoft for years – they’ve been a great customer, a technology supporter, and IT management partner,” said BlueStripe. “Going forward, you will see BlueStripe’s technology play an even more important role as new data centre and cloud solutions come to market. We are thrilled with the opportunity to be part of the next wave of IT innovation.”

Microsoft had already been using BlueStripe’s services before yesterday’s announcement.

“BlueStripe is commonly used today by customers to extend the value of Microsoft System Centre by adding application-aware infrastructure performance monitoring,” said Microsoft.

Microsoft pins the acquisition on the fact that an increasing number of business are turning to applications, and the company wants to be there to meet the demand for application environments.

However, Microsoft said in its acquisition blog post that, whilst it welcomes an undisclosed amount of BlueStripe employees into the family, it will soon discontinue selling BlueStripe solutions as the they are merged into Microsoft’s own offerings.

“We will be hard at work making BlueStripe’s solution an integral part of Microsoft’s management products and services, like System Center and Operations Management Suite (OMS). We will discontinue selling the BlueStripe solutions in the near term while we work on these updates, although we will continue to support existing BlueStripe customers during this time,” said Microsoft.

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