Companies producing software are becoming ever more reliant on open source databases to build their programs, but it’s complex working with all these different products. Instaclustr, a California startup, wanted to change that by offering popular open source databases delivered as a service.

Today, NetApp bought the company for an undisclosed amount. Instaclustr gives NetApp customers a way to install popular open source databases without worrying about the headaches of dealing with the raw open source. Among their supported projects are PostgresSQL, Apache Kafka, OpenSearch, ElasticSearch and Apache Cassandra,

This the latest in a series of small acquisitions for the company, which traditionally has delivered data and storage management services. In a blog post announcing the deal, NetApp executive vice president and general manager Anthony Lye said the acquisition was ultimately about improving customer experience by making it easier to install this software.

“The acquisition of Instaclustr is a strategic next step for NetApp; to do more for the customer, simplify the experience, continuously optimize and secure the platform so customers don’t have to do it themselves,” he wrote.

When combined with other acquisitions the company has made recently, there is a pattern here as the company tries to shift from legacy storage vendor to something that is more relevant for customers today looking to manage workloads in the cloud.

“We’ve made a series of strategic acquisitions including Spot, CloudCheckr and Fylamynt to deliver FinOps. And with Cloud Hawk, Cloud Secure and CloudCheckr, we now deliver SecOps. We deliver solutions for our customers’ most pressing cloud needs—scale, performance, speed, efficiency, security and cost,” Lyn wrote.

Ben Bromhead, CTO and co-founder at Instaclustr sees the two companies producing a a logical combination for customers. “From a technology and product perspective, NetApp’s powerful infrastructure solutions pair perfectly with Instaclustr’s data-layer-as-a-service solutions and services,” he said in a statement.

Instaclustr was founded in 2013 and raised around $22 million, according Crunchbase data. NetApp was founded in 1992 and went public in 1995. The stock is up slightly this afternoon. The deal is subject to regulatory approval and is expected to close in the first quarter of FY2023.

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