IBM said it has acquired Apptio, which makes IT management and optimization software, for $4.6 billion. Big Blue said the move will bolster its IT automation offerings.
Vista Equity Partners bought Apptio in 2018 for $1.94 billion.
IBM said it will combine Apptio with its IT automation software including Turbonomic, Instana and AIOps and Watsonx AI platform. Enterprises are increasingly looking to automate their IT operations and maximize financial returns (FinOps). IBM said that Apptio will bring anonymized IT spending data to provide insights.
Big Blue noted that it is at the early stages of integrating Apptio and developing roadmaps.
Constellation Research CEO Ray Wang said:
"It’s sign of the times. Companies want to know how to manage their cloud budgets and Apptio is one of the tools with cost management tools and technology portfolio management or FinOPs. IBM is betting that customers will want to buy software to manage cloud costs and tech spending."
Apptio has more than 1,500 customers and has integrations with multiple IT vendors including Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, ServiceNow, Salesforce, Oracle, SAP and others.
IBM launches Watsonx, an AI platform with open source models, governance
With the Apptio Purchase, IBM will own three core SaaS offerings including.
- ApptioOne, which tracks hybrid cloud spend management and optimization.
- Apptio Cloudability, which provides public cloud spend management and optimization visibility.
- Apptio Targetprocess, which aligns IT projects with business outcomes.
IBM said the plan is to scale Apptio's products via Red Hat, IBM's portfolio of software and AI products and IBM Consulting.
Here's a look at Apptio's platform.
