Completion combines the industry-leading solutions of Apptio’s FinOps offerings, including ApptioOne, Cloudability and Targetprocess, with IBM’s automation portfolio of Turbonomic, AIOps and Instana.
IBM has confirmed its acquisition of Apptio after receiving all required regulatory approvals.
The close brings together the recognized as industry-leading solutions of Apptio’s FinOps offerings, including ApptioOne, Cloudability and Targetprocess, and IBM’s automation portfolio of Turbonomic, AIOps and Instana, offering clients a ‘virtual command center’ for managing, optimizing and automating technology spending decisions.
With AI and foundation models top of mind for clients and partners, IBM will also augment its watsonx AI and data platform with Apptio’s $450 billion in anonymized IT spend data – unlocking new innovation, insight and value.
“The combination of Apptio products and IBM’s IT automation portfolio will give businesses a 360-degree technology management platform they can use to optimize and automate decisions across their IT landscapes,” said Rob Thomas, Senior Vice President, Software and Chief Commercial Officer, IBM. “We are bringing together market-leading and best-in-class solutions to continue to reshape IT from a cost center to a true competitive advantage, powered by automation and AI.”
Starting immediately, clients can leverage the early integration between Apptio and IBM through their Cloudability and Turbonomic offerings. This is a key first step as IBM looks to drive significant synergy across several key growth areas, including automation, Red Hat, IBM Consulting and IBM’s broader AI portfolio.
Cloudability gives organizations the data, insights and recommendations needed to understand and eliminate waste from their cloud spend, while Turbonomic generates trustworthy optimization decisions that can be automated to unlock true cloud elasticity, getting rid of overprovisioning to protect performance.
Together, these products can give clients full coverage for the Inform, Optimize and Operate stages of the FinOps Framework, providing what they need to control cloud spend without slowing innovation or negatively impacting operational performance.
Cloudability can ingest Turbonomic executed and proposed actions to provide a shared, single view across services that helps stakeholders understand the impact that has been, and can be, achieved by bringing these two leading IT automation offerings together.
Cloudability is pitched as enabling organizations to cut cloud costs by 30% or more while allocating 100% of cloud program costs and increasing reservation coverage to over 90%.
With Turbonomic, the pitch is improved cloud investments by 33% and 30% of engineering time back.
The close of the Apptio acquisition is one of a series of investments in IT Automation by IBM over the last three years.
In 2020, IBM launched its IT Automation portfolio when it announced its AIOps offerings that used AI and automation to help enterprises self-detect, diagnose and respond to IT anomalies in real time.
Later that year, IBM acquired Instana, recognizing that modern applications and operations required real-time observability.
Then, in 2021, IBM acquired Turbonomic which has specialized in helping clients optimize for application performance at the lowest cost with automation.
With the acquisition of Apptio, IBM will provide real-time data and actionable insights for leaders to make smarter spending decisions and realize value faster as they transform their operations.
Apptio is an established, growing, and profitable technology business management and FinOps leader with over 1,500 clients – serving more than half of the Fortune 100.
In June 2023, IBM announced a definitive agreement to acquire Washington DC based Apptio from Vista Equity Partners for $4.6 billion.
Subject to regulatory approvals and other customary closing conditions, Apptio was to be acquired with available cash on hand.
“We are committed to building resilient enterprise software companies, which has proven to be highly attractive to strategic and financial buyers as well as public markets,” said Robert F. Smith, Founder, Chairman and CEO of Vista Equity Partners.
“Apptio has transformed how leading organizations optimize their IT spend and performance for better outcomes.
“We are proud of our continued momentum, even amidst these challenged market conditions, and look forward to seeing how Apptio’s technology will bolster IBM’s IT automation and AI capabilities in the years ahead,” he said.
Industry recognized, Apptio partners and integrates with leading companies such as Amazon Web Services, Microsoft Azure, Google Cloud Platform, Salesforce, ServiceNow, Oracle and SAP, consistent with IBM’s commitment to an open partner ecosystem.
Pitched as empowering enterprise leaders to manage technology spend and direct investments to high-value cloud innovation and Digital Transformation, Apptio has three core offerings, all delivered as Software- As-a-Service (SaaS) – ApptioOne, Apptio Cloudability, and Apptio Targetprocess:
- ApptioOne: Hybrid cloud spend management and optimization capabilities to analyze, optimize and plan IT spend and value. ApptioOne is used to establish repeatable and accurate planning and financial management processes, delivering actionable insights around cost and utilization while benchmarking against industry peers for continuous optimization
- Apptio Cloudability: Public cloud spend management visibility and optimization capabilities, connecting multi-cloud and SaaS infrastructure with cloud financial management best practices to maximize the value of clients’ cloud strategy.
- Apptio Targetprocess: Agile investment planning capabilities to align development resources to business outcomes, plan and track value delivery for projects or products.
“Our customers are evolving to a complex digital-first, hybrid world where technology investments are distributed and decentralized but all innovation must be aligned with clear business outcomes,” said Sunny Gupta, Apptio co-founder and CEO.
“We are so excited to be joining IBM and combining our industry leading offerings with IBM’s global presence and strong portfolio across AIOps, automation and hybrid cloud offerings.”
The acquisition of Apptio is a continuation of IBM’s deep focus and investment in hybrid cloud and AI and is expected to drive significant synergies across several key growth areas for IBM, including automation, Red Hat, IBM’s broader AI portfolio and IBM Consulting, as well as strong partnership with other leading systems integrators like Accenture, KPMG, Deloitte and EY.
IBM will also deliver new innovation by augmenting watsonx with Apptio’s anonymized FinOps data.
Additionally, Apptio is expected to benefit from IBM’s long-established scale and reach, working with clients and partners across more than 175 countries.
