IBM reportedly nearing deal to acquire HashiCorp – Business
IBM Corp. is in advanced talks to acquire infrastructure management provider HashiCorp Inc., the Wall Street Journal reported today.
Sources familiar with the matter told the paper that the deal could be signed in a matter of days. According to the report, the sale would likely value HashiCorp above the $4.9 billion its shares were worth prior to the acquisition rumors. The company’s market capitalization has since increased over 18%, to $5.86 billion, on the report of the sale talks.
San Francisco-based HashiCorp provides a suite of open-source tools that enterprises use to manage their cloud infrastructure. Its software portfolio is headlined by Terraform, a tool that automates the task of setting up cloud instances and other hardware resources. It also eases several related tasks, notably the task of detecting erroneous changes to hardware resources’ configuration settings.
HashiCorp offers Terraform alongside more than a half dozen other open-source tools. Some have a similar focus on automating infrastructure-related tasks for software teams, while the rest are geared towards adjacent use cases. Two of HashiCorp’s tools, Vault and Boundary, are designed to improve the security of cloud environments.
The company generates revenue by selling paid, cloud-hosted versions of its open-source tools. Those versions are available through a platform known as the HashiCorp Cloud Platform, or HCP. The report of the acquisition talks with IBM comes a day after HashiCorp Chief Executive Officer Dave McJannet (pictured) rang the Nasdaq opening bell to mark the release of a major update to HCP.
The company on Monday expanded the platform with a managed version of its Terraform infrastructure automation tool. According to HashiCorp, HCP enables customers to deploy Terraform and its other open-source tools in minutes by removing the need to configure the underlying hardware. The platform includes high-availability features that ensure the tools remain accessible in the event of an infrastructure malfunction.
The premium IBM could reportedly pay for HashiCorp reflects the fact that the latter company is experiencing robust revenue growth. The open-source software maker’s revenue grew 15% year-over-year last quarter to $155.8 million, topping analyst expectations. HashiCorp disclosed in its earnings report that the paid cloud versions of its products are used by more than 4,423 companies, most of which spend more than $100,000 per year on the software.
IBM previously acquired software maker Apptio Inc. last June in a deal worth $4.6 billion. Apptio provides analytics tools that can visualize a company’s technology spending in dashboards to highlight cost-cutting opportunities. Organizations use the software to reduce their cloud expenses, plan future purchases and compare their technology budgets with industry peers.