VMware is bolstering its application packaging toolset with the purchase of Bitnami, the company announced on Wednesday.
VMware didn't disclose the price it was paying for San Francisco-based Bitnami, which makes prepackaged applications for the cloud. Bitnami's software application packages are designed to make it easier for developers to build services access various cloud and Kubernetes environments.
"Upon close, Bitnami will enable our customers to easily deploy application packages on any cloud—public or hybrid—and in the most optimal format—virtual machine (VM), containers and Kubernetes helm charts," according to a blog post by VMware. "Further, Bitnami will be able to augment our existing efforts to deliver a curated marketplace to VMware customers that offers a rich set of applications and development environments in addition to infrastructure software."
With Bitnami in hand, VMware can pursue a multi-cloud strategy for organizations that are creating and managing computing infrastructures that run on their own data centers as well as cloud environments such as Microsoft Azure and Amazon Web Services.
"I’m thrilled about the potential impact Bitnami will have on helping us accelerate our multi-cloud and Kubernetes offerings and efforts after close," said VMware's Shekar Ayyar, executive vice president for VMware's strategy and corporate development, in a blog post. "Bitnami's packaged application catalog enables developers to quickly and easily deploy open and closed source software to the world's leading cloud providers as well as on their own servers.
"Additionally, Bitnami’s expertise in packaging ISV software for Kubernetes will augment the efforts of our cloud native apps team after close. Last but not least, Bitnami’s application packaging capabilities will help our customers to simplify the consumption of applications in hybrid cloud environments from on-premises to VMware Cloud on AWS to VMware Cloud Provider Program partner clouds once the deal closes."
Bitnami got its start with angel investors and the Y Combinator startup accelerator, but only raised a total of $1.1 million. Founders Daniel Lopez and Erica Brescia said in a blog post that they knew they needed more funding to expand the company's growth and operations.
"We realized that, if we wanted to continue to grow, we would have to raise money, as building an enterprise sales force is not easy to do when you are bootstrapped," they wrote. "This was a decision we didn’t take lightly, but not raising money had its own risks, including potentially missing a window of opportunity in the industry.
"While this was not our original goal, as part of the conversations that we had during this process, we realized that VMware would be the ideal partner for us. We both believe in a Kubernetes and multi-cloud future."
RELATED: VMware strikes a deal for Kubernetes startup Heptio
In November, VMware announced it was buying Kubernetes startup Heptio, which was founded three years ago by Joe Beda and Craig McLuckie, who—along with Microsoft's Brendan Burns—co-created Kubernetes in 2014 while they were at Google.