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IBM to Acquire Instana to Advance its Hybrid Cloud and AI Strategy

Nov. 30, 2020, 2:46 p.m.

TL;DR

IBM recently announced a definitive agreement to acquire Instana, a German-American software firm that specializes in developing APM software. With this acquisition, IBM can further advance its Hybrid Cloud and AI technology and reinforce its AIOps and AI-powered automation capabilities.

Instana uses ML to identify patterns of interest for IT teams

Key Facts

1
With the latest acquisition of Instana, IBM can now help companies overcome difficulties in managing application performance across multiple teams and multiple clouds.
2
Instana has been built to take advantage of Kubernetes and cloud-based microservices to address critical gaps in automation.
3
Instana automatically monitors and acquires performance information about application components that are running on clouds, both public and private, mobile devices, and in-house environments like IBM’s Z system mainframes.
4
IBM plans to integrate Instana with its Watson AIOps to trigger AI-powered alerts to help teams resolve problems swiftly. IBM seems to have a headstart as Instana already supports monitoring applications deployed on OpenShift.
5
With Instana, IBM can enhance its internal management tools providing a way to monitor containerized environments running Kubernetes.

Details

With the acquisition of Instana, IBM marks its transformation from software and services to hybrid cloud management with an emphasis on hybrid cloud, big data, and Artificial Intelligence capabilities.

Besides displaying data about application performance, Instana uses ML to identify patterns of interest for IT teams. It can create a map of all the different components that make up an application and automatically update the visualization whenever a change occurs.

In the last decade, IBM has acquired several businesses as the company focuses on organic growth. In a recent interview, IBM CEO Arvind Krishna had said, “We are managing for the long-term. We are making strategic decisions, taking action, and increasing our investments today to better accelerate our business.”

Some of the significant acquisitions of IBM in the last few years were RedHat, Verizon Cloud Services, Truven Health Analytics, Cleversafe, and Lotus Software.

Mr. Krishna added, “We will be allocating more cash to growth going forward in emerging technologies such as quantum.” Industry experts can expect IBM to explore more deals in areas like AI, hybrid cloud, data, and security in the near future.

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.
Rob Thomas
Senior Vice President, Cloud and Data Platform, IBM