Now, I can’t let Ben Kepes and Krishnan Subramanian have all the fun. These two well-respected bloggers and #Clouderati members are both saying that EnStratus is looking like a Citrix acquisition target.

It appears that EnStratus (now Enstratus Networks LLC) is getting a good bit of business from enterprise customers to fill in the gaps that Cloud.com does not seem to be covering. As you may recall, Citrix acquired Cloud.com earlier this year.

Add to that the $3.5 million in funding (Ben says another $1 million is on the way)  and you have a stage set for some sort of play. That could be a ramp to get EnStratus in a place where it gets acquired or just as a way for it to grow its business. What do you think? EnStratus seems like a prime acquisition target to me.

EnStratus Founder George Reese literally wrote the book on cloud computing. The company he built has pretty much helped define infrasrtucture cloud management. It’s reputation is stellar. And Reese is attracting quite a team. In the past week he hired two other well-known members of the Cloud community: James Urquhart and John Willis. Urquhart represented Cisco on OpenStack and Willis is known for his expertise with Chef and his work at Opscode and the DevOps consulting firm DTO Solutions.

Krish says this about EnStratus:

enStratus is an interesting company because, unlike many other cloud management players, they focus deeply on governance, one of the biggest pain points for enterprises wanting to move to the cloud.

Services Angle

EnStratus is one of a core group of brilliant, small cloud computing companies that represent a defining time. These past two years have seen the rise of cloud computing. Leadign the wat have been aa bright and innovative community whose views have gone from leading edge to the verge of mainstream. We still have a bit of ways to go but the message is clear. We’ll see plenty of acquisitions in the new year. EnStratus will sure to be one of deep consideration.