Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE), fresh from its $650 million acquisition of SimpliVity, is buying another cloud computing firm -- Cloud Cruiser -- which offers analytics and software to measure the services used by customers.

The two companies announced the agreement in a blog post on Jan. 23. Financial details were not disclosed and the deal is expected to close later this year. Founded in 2010, Cloud Cruiser's customers include Accenture, KPN, Microsoft, Ford, TD Bank, as well as HPE, according to the blog.

Cloud Cruiser offers analytics and software that helps vendors measure, and then bill, the cloud services that businesses and their IT departments use. The goal is to offer a more accurate picture of the size and scope of the cloud services that customers need and want.

This acquisition fits into what HPE calls its Flexible Capacity, which is part of its hybrid cloud strategy -- combining both public and private cloud offerings for customers. In the blog post about the acquisition, Scott Weller, HPE's senior vice president of Technology Services Support, wrote that the company is attempting to split the difference between secure, on-premise infrastructure, and the speed that a public cloud offers to businesses.

Figure 1: HPE looks to part the IT clouds (Source: HPE)

"But while some workloads may be right for the public cloud, others -- which may require higher security, compliance and service levels -- are best kept on-premise," Weller wrote. "Because of these different needs, HPE helps organizations take a hybrid approach to IT. But how can business leaders enjoy the same IT-as-a-service model when employing a mix of public cloud and on-premise IT?"

This acquisition fits within HPE's bigger scheme to expand its cloud services. Earlier this month, the company's acquisition of SimpliVity expanded its ability to offer hyperconverged infrastructure, which combines compute, storage and networking into preconfigured systems that are controlled by software and make management simpler. (See HPE Buys SimpliVity for $650M in Hyperconverged Cloud Play.)

A recent report by IDC found that HPE was one of the leaders in cloud infrastructure with $1.25 billion in revenues and about a 15% market share during the third quarter of 2016. (See Cisco Gains, Dell & HPE Lose on Cloud Infrastructure - Analyst.)

The announcement did not say how many Cloud Cruiser employees would come over to HPE when the deal closes, although co-founder and CEO David Zabrowski will move to HPE. Cloud Cruiser has $19.8 million in funding, according to Crunchbase.

— Scott Ferguson, Editor, Enterprise Cloud. Follow him on Twitter @zdeferguson.

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