Brocade StackStorm acquisition brings data centre DevOps to networks

Network hardware vendor Brocade has swallowed up data centre automation upstart StackStorm in a bid to strengthen its DevOps strategy.

StackStorm, based out of Palo Alto, specialises in integrating DevOps into the data centre, and since the launch of its version 1.0 open source software last September, has seen a steadily growing community of users eager to try out its open source software. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

Brocade warranted the acquisition by claiming that DevOps implementation will enable itself, and its customers, to work more like “cloud titans” such as Amazon and Facebook, who are “notorious” for employing IT automation.

“The incredible business agility they have is the envy of industries from finance to manufacturing. What is less well known are the armies of in-house software developers behind the scenes that are a main catalyst for this agility,” said Brocade.

But, alas, not everyone has access to the type of budgets that these giants have, and writing copious amounts of automation software in-house can be taxing for smaller companies.

Whilst DevOps is all the rage in data centres, with the strategy used for compute, storage and virtualisation, Brocade said that it is yet to see the same enthusiasm for DevOps to manage networking.

“All of this is about to change,” said Brocade.

“Using StackStorm technology, Brocade customers will be able to bring DevOps methods to networking as well as experience many of the benefits of scale-out IT automation enjoyed by the Cloud Titans.

“Simply put, achieving business agility through DevOps methods for IT automation that also includes networking is no longer limited to Cloud Titans. Every IT shop will be able to realise those same benefits,” the company wrote on its blog this week.

Whilst keen to aid Brocade’s quest for network DevOps implementation, StackStorm itself said that the acquisition will help its community to flourish and grow its team even bigger. Founded in 2013, StackStorm has fewer than 50 employees, but is confident in its future with Brocade.

“The last few months have seen integrations with a variety of security systems, more monitoring, Kubernetes and much more. We are confident we’re just getting started and that the rest of 2016 will see a continued acceleration of StackStorm usage and community contributions and feedback,” said the company in a blog post this week.