CA Ups Cloud Profile With 3Tera Buy

3Tera makes AppLogic, a platform to build cloud services and deploy enterprise-class applications to public and private clouds via its user interface. Essentially, AppLogic offers a turnkey cloud platform that enables IT departments, solution providers and service providers to rapidly build and deploy cloud applications.

Neither company disclosed the financial terms of the acquisition.

The 3Tera purchase is the latest in a string of acquisitions CA has made to bulk up its cloud computing profile. In January, CA scooped up privately held Oblicore, an Israel-based developer of service level management software. Oblicore develops software to improve access to applications running on remote servers, technology critical for businesses as they adopt cloud computing and rely more on IT resources outside their data centers.

The Oblicore buy followed CA's September 2009 acquisition of NetQoS, a network performance management and service delivery software maker that CA snagged for $200 million. And before that, CA bought the technology assets of Cassatt for an undisclosed sum. The June 2009 Cassatt buy included software that helps businesses operate data centers like cloud computing compute utilities.

Now with the acquisition of 3Tera and its AppLogic platform, CA plans to aggressively expand its cloud computing portfolio and make the cloud an integral part of its integrated IT management program. 3Tera brings to the table roughly 80 enterprise and service provider users globally, along with myriad channel partners offering application stacks on demand.

Combined, CA is using its recent string of acquisitions to boost the functionality of its cloud offerings, which includes the Spectrum Automation Manager, a tool that manages network and systems traffic in both public and private cloud computing environments. Meanwhile, adding 3Tera to the roster fosters the ability to quickly and easily deploy new and existing applications in both public and private clouds.

"CIOs can use cloud computing to build and manage a new type of IT 'supply chain' across today's virtualized internal and external technology infrastructure," Chris O'Malley, executive vice president of CA's Cloud Products & Solutions Business Line, said in a statement. "3Tera technology is a powerful addition to the total solution CA provides for optimizing these high-value supply chains -- from the mainframe to the cloud."

CA said it plans to integrate AppLogic with the fruits of its other recent acquisitions and key technologies to offer a broad set of tools to deliver, manage and optimize cloud computing as a part of overall IT. CA added it plans to extend support of 3Tera, which currently operates on the Xen virtualization platform, to include both VMware ESX and Microsoft Hyper-V.

3Tera said AppLogic provides CA's cloud infrastructure with a cloud enablement offering that simplifies the design and deployment of applications in the cloud, which ultimately reduces costs, can improve productivity and boost service quality. Since its launch in 2004 3Tera has been on the leading edge of cloud platform innovation. Earlier this year, 3Tera further extended its leadership role in creating a pair of cloud computing certifications to enable service providers and solution providers to illustrate their prowess in the cloud.

"3Tera eliminates the manual, error-prone tasks that have historically hampered an organization's ability to deploy IT services to the cloud," 3Tera CEO Barry Lynn said in a statement. "As part of CA, we can bring rapid and simple cloud enablement to a dramatically larger group of customers, leveraging the thousands of CA sales, services and support professionals."