VMware Announces Intent to Acquire Bitnami to Build on Multi-Cloud and Kubernete...

Bitnami, a leading provider of application packaging solutions, will help VMware accelerate its multi-cloud and Kubernetes offerings and efforts.

Today, VMware revealed that it intends to acquire Bitnami, a leader in application packaging solutions providing the largest catalog of click-to-deploy applications and development stacks for major cloud and Kubernetes environments, for an undisclosed sum.

In the last 12 months, VMware has taken major strides in enhancing its cloud strategy.  The company focused on providing its customers with consistent infrastructure from the data center to the cloud and across clouds to make sure that applications receive optimal resources.  The recent acquisitions of Heptio and  CloudHealth Technologies helped them better position themselves to guide their customers as they transition to a multi-cloud era.

Now integrated into its Cloud Native Apps business unit, Heptio's open source and Kubernetes expertise and technologies are helping advance efforts to make Kubernetes the standard for customers building and running their applications across clouds.  CloudHealth by VMware is helping enterprises globally reduce operational complexity as they scale their cloud environments.

Up next, Bitnami.

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 VMware's Cloud Native Apps team after the deal closes.  Last but not least, Bitnami's application packaging capabilities will help VMware 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.

"Over the past years, we expanded our focus to help enterprises use Bitnami in production, often as part of a migration of their application to the cloud or their adoption of Kubernetes," stated Bitnami CEO Daniel Lopez. 

However, Bitnami founders Daniel Lopez and Erica Brescia realized they needed more money to continue moving forward.  The pair raised a modest $1.1M from Y Combinator and a handful of angels to fund the business, though quickly became profitable.

"We realized that, if we wanted to continue to grow, we would have to raise money, as building an enterprise salesforce is not easy to do when you are bootstrapped," said Lopez.  "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."

Lopez continued, "We realized that VMware would be the ideal partner for us.   We both believe in a Kubernetes and multi-cloud future.  We both share large enterprise customers, including cloud service providers.  We both are building products and services to help companies navigate this multi-platform, multi-vendor world with a focus on enterprises."

In a VMware blog post by Milin Desai and Paul Fazzone, the pair shared their thoughts on Bitnami's impact on VMware:

According to the announcements, not much will change.

"We are committed to maintaining the deep partnerships that Bitnami currently has with major cloud service providers today after close," explained Desai and Fazzone, "and we plan to continue to drive rich content to their marketplaces to enable the best experience for our mutual customers."

The pair went on to say, "This will also be an opportunity for VMware's existing Managed Service Provider (MSP) and VMware-based Cloud Service Provider (CSP) partners to provide Bitnami's application content to their end customers, and deliver value beyond infrastructure to help their customers with their respective digital transformation journeys."

According to Bitnami, "We will continue to develop and maintain our application catalog across all the platforms we support and even expand to additional ones."

"Our mission at Bitnami is to make awesome software available to everyone, everywhere.  There is a lot of great software out there, much of it open source, that is out of reach of many developers and system administrators because it is too complex to set up and maintain,” said Lopez.  "We cannot think of a better way to continue their contributions and career growth than as part of VMware, an industry leader."

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