Microsoft Slurps Up Opalis

Evidently, Microsoft is back in a buying mood. Yesterday, the company announced plans to acquire health-care software outfit Sentillion. And now Microsoft (MSFT) says it plans to buy Opalis Software, a maker of data center management software.

Financial terms, first reported by The Deal, were not disclosed. That said, when rumors of the acquisition began circulating in October, the purchase price was said to be $60 million.

Writing in a company blog post, Microsoft corporate VP Brad Anderson said Opalis is an essential piece of Redmond’s “dynamic data center initiative.”

“This deal brings together the deep datacenter automation expertise of Opalis with the integrated physical and virtualized datacenter management capabilities of Microsoft System Center. I believe Opalis’ software together with the System Center suite will improve the efficiency of IT staff and operations, and customers will gain greater process consistency. Opalis’ software captures the IT processes, in a documented and repeatable way, which can be run over and over again. These capabilities will be added to Microsoft System Center to help customers automate complex IT processes, increase cost savings and shorten timeframes for IT service delivery across physical, virtual and cloud computing environments.”