Microsoft strengthens app management with acquisition

Microsoft has acquired application management technology provider BlueStripe Software and will integrate the solution into its own offerings, dumping the start-up's own offering in the process.

Microsoft says the acquisition will help customers improve applications visibility and management across the data center and cloud.

BlueStripe's solution is commonly used to extend the value of Microsoft System Center by adding application-aware infrastructure performance monitoring.

The company's solution helps map, monitor and troubleshoot applications distributed across multiple environments including data centers and cloud.

Mike Neil, Microsoft enterprise cloud general manager, says applications and data are being spread across on-premises data centers and public, private and hosted clouds as businesses turn to applications to drive innovation and gain competitive advantage.

"While IT teams may not operate all of the infrastructure where the applications run, they still require visibility and the ability to manage these applications in order to support and protect the business," Neil says.

He says BlueStripe's offering enables IT professionals to gain visibility into applications at a transaction level, rather than monitoring IT at the infrastructure level.

"The technology discovers and maps applications and dependencies, pinpoints problems for faster resolution and helps maintain SLAs across complex underlying infrastructure.

By mapping the structure of distributed applications, Neil says BlueStripe also helps in the process of updating applications to more modern platforms and migrating to the cloud.

He says the global behemoth has 'welcomed BlueStripe employees into the Microsoft family' and is working on making BlueStripe's solution part of its own management products and services like System Center and Operations Management Suite.

"We will discontinue selling the BlueStripe solutions in the near term while we work on these updates, although we will continue to support existing BlueStripe customers during this time," Neil says.

Financial terms of the deal were not disclosed.