CXO Spectrum

Cloud

IBM to Acquire Apptio Inc., Enhancing Financial and Operational Insights in Enterprise IT

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IBM has announced its definitive agreement to acquire Apptio Inc., a prominent provider of financial and operational IT management and optimization (FinOps) software, from Vista Equity Partners for a total of $4.6 billion. This strategic acquisition represents a significant step forward for IBM’s IT automation capabilities and will empower enterprise leaders to deliver heightened business value through their technology investments.

With digital transformations occurring at an unprecedented pace, businesses are witnessing the expansion of IT environments across public and private clouds, often involving multiple service providers. To navigate this complex landscape, organizations have increasingly turned to Apptio’s solutions, which offer integrated and simplified visibility into technology spending across hybrid and multi-cloud environments, as well as labor and associated resources. By combining Apptio’s expertise with IBM’s IT automation software and watsonx AI platform, companies worldwide will gain the ability to effectively manage and optimize their enterprise IT spend, driving tangible financial value and operational improvement.

Apptio has established itself as a profitable leader in technology business management and FinOps, boasting over 1,500 clients, including more than half of the Fortune 100. The company has built strong partnerships and integrations with industry giants such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Oracle, and SAP, aligning with IBM’s commitment to an open partner ecosystem.

Apptio equips enterprise leaders with the tools to manage technology spend and direct investments toward high-value cloud innovation and digital transformation. The company’s core offerings, delivered as software as a service (SaaS), include ApptioOne, Apptio Cloudability, and Apptio Targetprocess:

ApptioOne: Offers hybrid cloud spend management and optimization capabilities for analyzing, optimizing, and planning IT spend and value. ApptioOne enables repeatable and accurate planning and financial management processes, delivering actionable insights regarding cost and utilization, while facilitating continuous optimization through benchmarking against industry peers.

Apptio Cloudability: Provides visibility and optimization capabilities for managing public cloud spend, connecting multi-cloud and SaaS infrastructure with cloud financial management best practices to maximize clients’ cloud strategy.

Apptio Targetprocess: Delivers agile investment planning capabilities to align development resources with business outcomes, enabling effective planning and tracking of value delivery for projects or products.

Arvind Krishna, CEO and Chairman of IBM, emphasized the need to optimize investments to derive better business value in the rapidly evolving technological landscape. He stated, “Apptio’s offerings combined with IBM’s IT automation software and watsonx AI platform give clients the most comprehensive approach to optimize and manage all of their technology investments.”

The acquisition of Apptio aligns with IBM’s strong focus on hybrid cloud and AI, and is expected to generate significant synergies across various key growth areas, including automation, Red Hat, IBM’s broader AI portfolio, and IBM Consulting. Moreover, it will strengthen IBM’s collaboration with leading systems integrators such as Accenture, KPMG, Deloitte, and EY. By integrating Apptio’s anonymized FinOps data, IBM will augment watsonx with new insights, further driving innovation.
Sunny Gupta, Co-founder and CEO of Apptio, expressed excitement about joining IBM, stating, “We are so excited to be joining IBM and combining our industry-leading offerings with IBM’s global presence and strong portfolio across AIOps, automation, and hybrid cloud offerings.” The acquisition will enable Apptio to leverage IBM’s extensive scale and reach, collaborating with clients and partners across over 175 countries.

Robert F. Smith, Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Vista Equity Partners, emphasized the success of Apptio’s transformation in optimizing IT spend and performance for leading organizations. He expressed pride in the shared accomplishments and the potential for further evolution of Apptio under IBM’s ownership.

The acquisition of Apptio will be funded using IBM’s available cash reserves. The transaction is subject to customary closing conditions and regulatory approvals, with completion expected in the latter half of 2023.

Increase in Chance of Vendor Acquisition:
IBM’s acquisition of Apptio Inc. and its leadership in ITAM and FinOps may lead to increased speculation about the acquisition of other vendors with FinOps and ITAM expertise, such as Flexera. The market recognizes the value and importance of these companies in providing actionable financial and operational insights across enterprise IT, and industry players may seek to acquire such vendors to strengthen their capabilities in this space.

Javelin Finds Financial Institutions Not Ready for Modern, Global Threats

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In new research sponsored by Booz Allen Hamilton and conducted by digital finance analyst firm Javelin Strategy & Research, the current state of financial institutions’ threat landscape is rather alarming.

The research firm finds that today’s businesses need to look view cybersecurity threats as essentially asymmetrical warfare.

The full report can be downloaded here, but key findings are:

  • Economic and political interests can underpin state-sponsored cyber-threats as financial institutions function as lucrative targets
  • Cloud deployments can complicate operations if strategy is not considered thoroughly
  • “Crypto-jacking,” malware hosting, and command-and-control infrastructure attacks are serious threats and should be considered/prepared for as seriously as data breaches
  • Wiper and ransomware attacks are looming and FIs are not prepared to prevent them
  • Authentication is a source of concern, with 40% of FIs worried about unauthorized access.
  • Multi-cloud environments can invite vulnerability, whether by a likelihood of poor configuration management or simple weak understanding of cloud environments.
  • Security teams have a real opportunity to embrace automation.

D2iQ Launches GitOps Platform Dispatch

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Enterprise-grade cloud platform D2iQ announces new GitOps platform to accelerate continuous integration and delivery of cloud native applications.

Software engineering teams are under constant pressure to deliver new features quickly and organizations are struggling to reduce complexity and accelerate the development and delivery of new application capabilities.

According to D2iQ, Dispatch delivers a number of benefits to address these issues across three core categories, including;

  • Developer Empowerment: Dispatch empowers developers with a single-pipeline solution that builds anywhere, without requiring configuration changes. By providing a powerful, easy-to-use build orchestration tool, multiple declarative languages to configure pipelines and personal development environments, Dispatch increases productivity enabling developers to independently manage their pipeline, without central teams slowing them down.  This significantly enhances the developer experience.
  • Operational Freedom: With GitOps code repositories for the configuration of a Kubernetes cluster, application or other infrastructure, Dispatch provides operators with the flexibility to make localized pipeline changes without affecting the global state of the system, while also empowering operators to validate without user impact. Dispatch also provides operational freedom over a variety of target environments and can be deployed locally or on private/public cloud Kubernetes, standardizing the CI/CD process across the organization. While Dispatch can run independently of other D2iQ products, the platform is optimized to run on D2iQ Konvoy, providing immediate benefit to customers when the solutions are deployed together.
  • Cloud Native Foundation: Dispatch is built from the ground up with open-source cloud native technologies, enabling developers to take advantage of the feature-rich infrastructure. This infrastructure allows developers to seamlessly integrate their underlying Kubernetes features into their build while providing choices to improve their specific platform over time as new technologies advance.

Cloud and Data Center Services Provider Lume Lands $4.3M in Funding

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In more cloud news, Atlanta-based Lume, announced today a funding round of $4.3 million.

The funding round was led by Colorado-based BaseCamp Capital LLC, a Colorado-based private equity group. In addition to BaseCamp, several individual executives participated in the round, including:

  • John Schanz, former EVP and Chief Network Officer at Comcast
  • Joe Wetzel, former Earthlink President and COO
  • Mark Mendes, former senior executive at Cisco/BroadSoft
  • Octavio Morales, founder of TierPoint

Lume plans to use the funding to grow its customer base for its Cloud Anyware and edge data center solutions. Current Lume customers include Resolution Economics, Intuitive IT Solutions, EpiGrid, KOA, and NJUNS Inc.

Basecamp’s portfolio includes real estate, tech, telecom, outdoor industry and others.

Cloud Governance Provider OpsCompass Lands $6.78M in Series A

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OpsCompass, with offices in Nebraska, Minnesota, and Illinois, has secured its Series A funding, led by Elsewhere Partners with participation from Dundee Venture Capital, Invest Nebraska, M25, Nelnet, and Nebraska Angels.

The company provides an enterprise SaaS product for operational control, visibility, and security in and across cloud platforms including Microsoft Azure, AWS, Office 365, and Google Cloud.

On the funding, OpsCompass CEO Manny Quevedo said, “We’ve seen significant interest in our product from security services, cloud management providers, and the leading cloud services themselves. Our clients are moving critical workloads into multi-cloud environments and require enterprise-grade solutions reinforced by ongoing R&D and clear product evolution.”