Open source software solutions player, Red Hat, is set to boost its hybrid and multicloud standing with the US$250 million (A$309 million) acquisition of CoreOS.
Founded in 2013, CoreOS is known for its Kubernetes platform, Tectonic, which is a commercial distribution of the combined Kubernetes and CoreOS stack, as well as its enterprise-ready container registry, CoreOS Quay.
According to Red Hat, CoreOS was created with a goal of building and delivering infrastructure for organisations of all sizes that mirrored that of large-scale software companies, automatically updating and patching servers and helping to solve pain points like downtime, security and resilience.
“Since its early work to popularise lightweight Linux operating systems optimised for containers, CoreOS has become well-regarded as a leader behind award-winning technologies that are enabling the broad adoption of scalable and resilient containerised applications,” Red Hat said in a statement.
According to CoreOS CEO, Alex Polvi, the company’s relationship with Red Hat began years ago, as two open source collaborators developing some of the key innovations in containers and distributed systems.
“This announcement marks a new stage in our shared aim to make these important technologies ubiquitous in business and the world,” Polvi said. “Thank you to the CoreOS family, our customers, partners, and most of all, the free software community for supporting us in our mission to make the internet more secure through automated operations.”
Red Hat’s deal to acquire CoreOS is aimed at furthering the open source software giant’s vision of enabling customers to “build any application and deploy them in any environment with the flexibility afforded by open source”.
By combining CoreOS’s capabilities with Red Hat’s existing Kubernetes and container-based portfolio, the company hopes to further accelerate the adoption and development of its hybrid cloud platform for modern application workloads.
“The next era of technology is being driven by container-based applications that span multi- and hybrid cloud environments, including physical, virtual, private cloud and public cloud platforms,” Red Hat products and technologies president, Paul Cormier, said.
“Kubernetes, containers and Linux are at the heart of this transformation, and, like Red Hat, CoreOS has been a leader in both the upstream open source communities that are fueling these innovations and its work to bring enterprise-grade Kubernetes to customers.
“We believe this acquisition cements Red Hat as a cornerstone of hybrid cloud and modern app deployments,” he said.
The deal is expected to close in January 2018, subject to customary closing conditions.
