Progress Software Inc. today said it plans to acquire infrastructure automation firm Chef Software Inc. for $220 million, or about twice the $105 million in funding Chef has raised to date.

The Bedford, Mass.-based Progress said the addition of Chef will contribute to Progress’ efforts to “build, deploy, manage and secure applications in modern multicloud and hybrid environments, as well as on-premises.”

Chef’s focus is on secure agile development, known as DevSecOps, infrastructure, application and compliance automation. Its more than $70 million in annual recurring revenue will be accretive to Progress’ revenue in its fiscal first quarter, which begins in December.

Founded in 1981, Progress is one of the oldest independent software firms. Although it has been publicly held since 1991 and has more than $425 million in annual revenue and a global base of 100,000 enterprise customers, the company has traditionally kept a low profile.

Progress’ diverse business includes tools for building adaptive user experiences across devices, web content management, secure file transfer, network monitoring and machine learning for anomaly detection and business rules automation. Progress says more than 2 million developers use its software.

Chef is one of largest players in the infrastructure-as-code market, which encompasses tools that enable engineers to automate infrastructure configuration via scripts. Its domain-specific language is used to write “recipes” that perform complex configuration tasks across the largest public clouds.

Most of Chef’s software is available under open-source licenses, with the company deriving its revenue from enhanced enterprise versions. The company claims to have 2,500 customers and more than 1.7 million downloads of its software each year. In June, Chef expanded its product line to include automated security tools for compliance and management of desktop devices.

Founded in 2008, Chef built an early lead in the automation market but was put at a disadvantage when Red Hat Inc. acquired rival Ansible in 2015. Since then, most major cloud providers have introduced competing infrastructure and compliance automation tools for hybrid cloud environments.

“This acquisition perfectly aligns with our growth strategy and meets the requirements that we’ve previously laid out: a strong recurring revenue model, technology that complements our business, a loyal customer base and the ability to leverage our operating model and infrastructure to run the business more efficiently,” Progress Chief Executive Yogesh Gupta said in a statement.

Photo: Chef Software