Microsoft has acquired Opalis, a leading provider of next-generation IT process automation software.  Opalis will become a wholly owned subsidiary of Microsoft and will maintain offices in Mississauga, Ontario. The Opalis products will become part of the System Center family of datacenter management products.

Opalis provides IT process automation software. This software helps organizations to automate IT processes across their complex, heterogeneous datacenter environments. Opalis solutions include:

  • Prepackaged workflows and automation expertise for the common tasks in managing a datacenter.  Examples include Run Book Automation (RBA), virtual machine lifecycle management, incident ticket management, and cloud computing virtual machine migration
  • An automation platform designed to be simple to use by customers so they can quickly create and execute workflows across datacenter management tools
  • Deep integration capabilities to orchestrate tasks across datacenter infrastructure and systems management products including those from BMC, CA, IBM, HP, Microsoft, and Symantec

Microsoft’s acquisition of Opalis brings together the deep datacenter automation expertise of Opalis with the integrated physical and virtual datacenter management capabilities of Microsoft System Center. The addition of Opalis’ IT process automation capabilities to Microsoft’s growing systems management portfolio is designed to help enterprise customers and service providers:

  • Lower the cost of datacenter management through automating complex IT processes across the datacenter, while managing the physical and virtual environment  through the Microsoft System Center platform
  • Drive IT efficiency across the datacenter with expertise delivered through pre-packaged workflows, and deep integration across the infrastructure and management environments of the datacenter
  • Build on existing skills to better manage IT and business growth with the extended System Center product offering across highly virtual, heterogeneous datacenters

The market leading IT Process Management capabilities of Opalis will also provide Microsoft with a broader set of datacenter management capabilities through the ability to orchestrate tasks and workflows across the complete datacenter environment and across a variety of management tools.