Instana sale to advance IBM’s hybrid cloud and AI strategy

IBM is buying Instana in a bid to shore up its hybrid cloud and AI strategy.

It’s part of a transformation for IBM towards hybrid cloud management. Instana’s technology will help it to manage the performance of applications running across multiple cloud platforms.

The deal price has not been disclosed.

IBM’s recent/AI acquisition timeline

Red Hat
July 2019 – $34bn – open source software and solutions

Spanugo
June 2020 – $undisclosed – cloud cybersecurity posture management

WDG
July 2020 – $undisclosed – AI automation for enterprises

TruQua
November 2020 – $undisclosed – financial platform migration

Instana
November 2020 – $undisclosed – cloud application management

‘Lost revenue and reputation’

Rob Thomas, senior vice president, cloud and data platform, IBM, said, "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

“IBM's acquisition of Instana is yet another important step that we are taking to provide companies with the most complete portfolio of AI-automated solutions to tackle this enormous challenge and help prevent unforeseen IT incidents that can cost a business in lost revenue and reputation."

Mirko Novakovic, co-founder and CEO, Instana, said, "With the added responsibility of ensuring the build and run quality of the software they develop, DevOps teams need a new generation of application performance monitoring and observability capabilities to succeed.

"Instana's observability capabilities combined with IBM's AI-powered automation capabilities across hybrid cloud environments will give clients a full view of their application performance to best optimise operations."