CA buys cloud platform provider 3Tera

IT management software vendor CA has announced that it will be acquiring privately-held 3Tera for an undisclosed amount. 3Tera is the creator of AppLogic, a management platform in which a graphically oriented system is used to configure applications for deployment in the cloud.

CA says that this latest acquisition is part of the company's effort to handle application management issues in the cloud, tying them back to CA's existing system management and performance monitoring products. In addition, CA also has plans to expand 3Tera's virtualization support beyond the Xen virtualization platform, and to eventually support competing platforms such as VMWare ESX and Microsoft HyperV.

Gartner analyst Donna Scott says that this latest acquisition is CA's strategy to "get ahead of the curve." Scott noted that "[CA] is buying small companies early instead of waiting for a fully developed (cloud) marketplace."

Of CA's intention to enter into the cloud computing market, Forrester Research analyst James Staten wrote in a blog post: "If anyone doubted CA Inc.'s intention to get into the cloud computing market, you can't get away with that skepticism anymore. This company is serious."

For more on this story:
- check out the article at CNET News
- check out the article at InformationWeek

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