Brocade Acquisition Of DevOps Automation Startup StackStorm Seen As Smart Move By Partners

Networking vendor Brocade Communications has acquired startup StackStorm, a provider of software for automating data center operations, which partners say will lead to new revenue opportunities for the channel.

San Jose, Calif.-based Brocade, which specializes in data and storage networking products, plans to leverage StackStorm technology to accelerate its efforts to bring DevOps-style scalable open-source automation to Brocade's networking solutions, according to a blog post by the company.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

[Related: Arista Aims Squarely At Cisco, Juniper With New Switching And Routing Platform]

Barry Shevlin, CEO of Vology, a Tampa, Fla.-based solution provider and Brocade partner, said StackStorm is an "intelligent" acquisition for Brocade as customers are increasingly seeking open-source technology solutions.

"People are concerned about being stuck in one vendor's ecosystems and interoperability, and that certainly is playing into those conversations," said Shevlin. "[StackStorm] certainly looks to be an exciting product."

Under Brocade, the StackStorm technology will be extended to networking and new integrations will be developed for automation across IT domains such as storage, compute and security.

Shevlin said StackStorm's ability to help simplify networking through automation will likely lead to more sales down the road, as simplification is at the top of customers' minds.

"I think it will be more relevant for our managed service customers. We've got some full-time scripters here on site where we're constantly trying to automate and simplify managing stuff on behalf of our customers," said Shevlin. "It looks like a really good fit for Brocade."

Palo Alto, Calif.-based StackStorm was founded in 2013 and launched out of stealth mode in May 2014.

StackStorm's first solution -- an event-driven automation platform that ties together every component of an environment, typically used for auto-remediation including response to security events -- was launched in September. Customers include of Dimension Data and Netflix, according to a blog post by StackStorm CEO and founder Evan Powell.

"Brocade intends to increase their support for the StackStorm community and the team is already growing," wrote Powell, who will not be joining Brocade alongside the rest of the StackStorm team. "I believe you'll see continued excellence in community engagement from the team as well as a further focus on the scalability of StackStorm as it is taken into some of the world’s most mission critical network operations environments."

Brocade shares were up 2.2 percent in late trading.

The networking vendor also made headlines recently with the hiring of Pete Peterson as its new vice president of worldwide channel sales.