HPE buys Morpheus Data for multicloud management

Hewlett Packard Enterprise announced it is acquiring cloud management firm Morpheus Data for an undisclosed figure.

Founded in 2010, Morpheus is known for its cloud-agnostic management software that lets organizations control resources across hybrid environments, including on-premises cloud operations and public clouds such as AWS, Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure.

HPE plans to bring the Morpheus technology to its GreenLake hybrid cloud platform to help customers manage multiple clouds and gain access to capabilities including multicloud application provisioning, orchestration and automation, access control, and backup and resource monitoring. Morpheus will also continue to be offered as standalone software, HPE stated.

In addition, HPE GreenLake will integrate Morpheus’ financial operation software, which helps businesses make informed spending decisions on cloud services. “HPE will combine its multi-vendor, multicloud IT data with Morpheus’ FinOps capabilities to enable customers to understand their cloud spend, put guardrails around usage and optimize their workloads to lower costs,” HPE stated.

More than 90% of enterprises use multiple clouds, and managing these resources is a growing challenge, according to a recent IDC report, Worldwide Intelligent CloudOps Software Forecast, 2024–2028. The research firm estimates that the worldwide market for intelligent CloudOps software will grow to $40 billion in 2028.

“Companies want consistent control and standardization in the public and private cloud environments. Hybrid clouds are here for years to come, so enterprises need tools to manage this complexity today,” IDC stated. “The goal with multiple cloud support is to reuse code from infrastructure-as-code provisioning for any cloud. Furthermore, enterprises seek improved cloud cost transparency recommendations, such as automatically moving and reprovisioning workloads based on the customer’s lowest cost and best-performing cloud.”

HPE’s Morpheus buy could also potentially help address looming talent issues, as companies look to manage complex cloud environments with fewer people, experts said.

“By the end of 2025, with enterprises completing the implementation of many of their digital transformation strategies and the continued migration of workloads to cloud-native technologies such as containers and serverless, Global 2000 enterprises will continue to struggle even more to find skilled workers to manage this added complexity in multiple clouds,” IDC stated.

“A large percentage of a digital enterprise’s revenue depends upon the responsiveness, scalability, and resiliency of its infrastructure, applications, and data resources. These capabilities include applications on public cloud, hybrid on-premises, and company-owned edge locations,” IDC stated.

The HPE/Morpheus combination is expected to compete in the CloudOps market with vendors including Red Hat and VMware by Broadcom as well as cloud providers such as AWS and Google Cloud. The transaction is expected to close early in the fourth quarter of HPE’s 2024 fiscal year.