The acquisition will help VMware deliver an ‘end-to-end automation solution’
VMware kicked off its VMworld 2020 conference by announcing its purchase of automation software company SaltStack to support VMware’s vRealize cloud management software suite.
With the purchase, VMware is acquiring Salt, an open-source tool that has been downloaded more than 17 million times in 2020 around the world and is used by information technology administrators for daily maintenance work. Salt automates tasks like software installation on virtual machines and fixing firewall configuration errors. It also includes features for managing public cloud environments.
In a blog post, Ajay Singh, the head of VMware’s Cloud Management Business Unit, said the acquisition will help the company deliver an “end-to-end automation solution with integrated configuration management.”
“SaltStack will help us to complete our automation story,” wrote Singh, “enabling us to extend our automation capabilities beyond infrastructure to the entire application stack. These software configuration management capabilities will help us address the full spectrum of customers’ automation needs and further strengthen customers’ ability to automate the deployment and configuration of infrastructure platforms both on-premises and in the cloud with VMware vRealize Automation.”
In addition, Singh discussed VMware’s commitment to providing its customers with as much choice as possible, pointing vRealize’s support of Puppet, Ansible and Terraform as evidence of this.
“We are committed to supporting those integrations. We also believe that many vRealize customers will benefit from an end-to-end automation solution with integrated configuration management, which we intend to deliver following the close of the SaltStack acquisition,” he continued.
When exactly the deal will close, however, has not yet been disclosed.
Open software is also part of Saltstack’s approach, an approach that Singh claimed promises “faster time to market, expanded access to innovation and increased developer productivity,” as well as pushes innovation.
As part of its commitment to a more open ecosystem, VMware last month entered into a partnership with Intel to “to simplify the steps and reduce the integration effort” associated with open and virtualized RAN.
At the time of the announcement, VMware’s VP of Telco Strategy Sachin Katti explained that goal in more detail to RCR Wireless News, commenting that the goal of deal is “essentially taking a lot of the integration risk out of the system and make sure these things work well before they even hit the operator. We don’t want the operators to be nervous about an Open RAN deployment.”
