Oracle to acquire cloud management software biz Nimbula

Enterprise software titan Oracle has agreed to acquire Nimbula — a cloud infrastructure management software startup that was founded by former Amazon Web Services gurus — for an undisclosed amount.

Nimbula dubs itself the “Cloud Operating System company” and lets corporate customers manage their cloud assets (private, public, and hybrid) from one dashboard. It was started by Amazon EC2 veterans Chris Pinkham and Willem van Biljon.

Pinkham spoke at both of CloudBeat events, in 2011 and 2012, where we showcase emerging disruptive cloud technology. VentureBeat founder Matt Marshall interviewed Pinkham two years ago. It was already clear then the executive was ambitious, targeting what he saw as a $4 billion market, and cutting out “middlemen” like VMware, Citrix and EMC.

“Nimbula’s technology helps companies manage infrastructure resources to deliver service, quality, and availability, as well as workloads in private and hybrid cloud environments,” Oracle said in a small announcement. “Nimbula’s product is complementary to Oracle and is expected to be integrated with Oracle’s cloud offerings.”

Oracle expects the Nimbula transaction to close in the first half of 2013. Other details including the price tag on the deal were not disclosed.

Today’s deal adds to the many acquisitions Oracle has sought in the past year. A month ago, Oracle announced its intent to buy networking technology company Acme Packet for $2.1 billion. And in 2012, Oracle announced agreements to purchase 11 companies, including high-profile buys of Taleo, Eloqua, Vitrue, and Skire.

Oracle HQ photo via Flickr