After IBM paid $6.4 billion for HashiCorp in April, another acquisition has followed suit within months. Kubecost, which as its name suggests tracks costs for Kubernetes environments, is a logical addition.
By the end of 2024, the HashiCorp acquisition is expected to be complete, but IBM is not waiting around in the meantime. Kubecost, a startup launched in 2019 in San Francisco, has grown rapidly. In July, it announced it had passed the 10 million installation mark. That makes it the most widely used tool for monitoring Kubernetes costs.
IBM strategy
We wrote back in April about the role HashiCorp will play within the IBM portfolio. As a management layer for hybrid and multi-cloud, it could play a crucial role for IBM customers. Although the acquisition of Kubecost (with no known financial details) will have been a lot cheaper for IBM, it is another piece of the puzzle in Big Blue’s ever-expanding cloud management portfolio.
Also read: Update: IBM confirms multi-billion acquisition of HashiCorp
An earlier IBM acquisition from mid-2023 is closely linked to Kubecost: Apptio. The latter offers software that maximizes the impact of IT infrastructure on finances. With Kubecost Cloud, Kubecost does the same within Kubernetes environments.
Integration
IBM will house Kubecost’s solutions within its existing FinOps Suite. This suite is actually a combination of several IBM acquisitions: in addition to Apptio and eventually Kubecost, the work of Cloudability, Instana and Turbonomic is incorporated into FinOps Suite.
Co-founder and CEO Webb Brown is pleased with the acquisition. “We started with Kubernetes cost monitoring, and we’ve proudly become the most widely adopted solution in the cloud native ecosystem. Now, as a result of this merger, we’re poised to accelerate our mission by delivering broader, end-to-end cost management solutions to teams everywhere.”
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