James is editor in chief of TechForge Media, with a passion for how technologies influence business and several Mobile World Congress events under his belt. James has interviewed a variety of leading figures in his career, from former Mafia boss Michael Franzese, to Steve Wozniak, and Jean Michel Jarre. James can be found tweeting at @James_T_Bourne.











As one company in the cloud monitoring space announces funding, another goes a different route: Microsoft has confirmed it has signed a definitive agreement to acquire Israel-based Cloudyn.

The move will help Azure customers manage and optimise their cloud usage, as a blog post from Jeremy Winter, director of program management Azure security and operations management confirming the news explained.

“This acquisition fits squarely into our commitment to empower customers with the tools they need to govern their cloud adoption and realise the strategic benefits of a global, trusted, intelligent cloud,” Winter wrote. “Cloudyn capabilities will be incorporated into our product portfolio that offers customers the industry’s broadest set of cloud management, security and governance solutions.”

In a ‘message from the CEO’ missive, Cloudyn chief exec Sharon Wagner added: “When we started this journey, our goal was to build a great company, attract the best and brightest talent and provide the best business management solution for all clouds. We have strived to help our customers be their company’s cloud heroes, and hope we have succeeded.”

The news comes in the same week that CloudHealth Technologies, a Boston-based cloud service management provider, announced series D funding to the tune of $46 million (£35.8m). Unlike Cloudyn, however, CloudHealth’s open stance is to move towards IPO.

As a result, the space is certainly heating up. Mindy Cancila, Gartner research director, was quoted in a recent article saying that “interest in cloud management tools is very high right now.” This publication featured Cloudyn as far back as 2012 – the company was founded the year before – as one of the ‘cloud 300’ companies of movers and shakers in the then-relatively nascent industry.

Back then, as this blog from author Ray De Pena noted, Cloudyn only supported AWS, with Microsoft integration arriving later that year. Wagner told De Pena that his company could provide 41% cost reduction through price optimisation and ‘rightsizing’, restructuring assets for the highest value. In comparison, Winter noted one US-based Fortune 500 customer of Cloudyn had seen a 286% return on investment with regard to their cloud efficiencies.

The acquisition move was not unexpected by those inside the industry. In April, Israeli publication Calcalist reported (Hebrew) that Microsoft was negotiating the acquisition of the cloud monitoring and cost optimisation provider at a cost of between $50 million and $70 million.

Financial terms of the deal however were not disclosed.