GigaSpaces Plans Spinoff of Cloudify Division to Focus on Enterprise Hybrid Cloud Management and Network Orchestration
July 27, 2017
GigaSpaces Technologies announced today that it will spin off Cloudify, its orchestration and cloud management platform business unit, into a new company focused on the fast-growing market for management and orchestration of cloud applications and network functions virtualization (NFV).
Planning for the move began in 2016, driven by strong growth of the Cloudify product line in core enterprise cloud markets, as well as success in entering the carrier network orchestration market. It allows the new Cloudify entity to dedicate engineering, product development, marketing and customer support activities to the cloud market segment. GigaSpaces, with its long-standing track record in the in-memory computing market, will continue to capitalize on its technology investments and innovation in its XAP and InsightEdge product lines.
In 2016, GigaSpaces open sourced all products and shifted to an open source support business model. The GigaSpaces IMC business unit launched InsightEdge, which leverages the Apache Spark cluster computing project, while Cloudify launched Apache Project ARIA, a simple, open source orchestration library to accelerate TOSCA adoption. Both are part of the company’s strategy to leverage open source software, which has emerged as the preferred means for both enterprises and service providers to implement technology rather than proprietary commercial off-the-shelf software.
The new company will retain the core Cloudify engineering, product and marketing teams, working from existing offices in New York City; San Jose, California; and Tel Aviv, Israel.
"It was always our plan to eventually spin off Cloudify," said Nati Shalom, CTO at Cloudify. "Based on the impressive growth of the open-source Cloudify project, and increased market penetration of the commercially supported Cloudify product, it has become clear that now is the time to do so. This strategic move gives us the freedom to accelerate engineering development in both product lines."
"Success has led us here," noted Zeev Bikowsky, CEO of GigaSpaces. "Recent growth in both product lines is a testament to the exceptional work of our employees and the ideal timing of our offerings in two very different markets. This spinoff will not only benefit our customers, employees, partners and the Cloudify open source community, but will also enable greater clarity and focus for our current and possibly future investors."
While the XAP/InsightEdge and Cloudify businesses are already functioning as separate business units, the structural spinoff is still subject to various regulatory, tax and other approvals.