VMware Inc. is acquiring SaltStack Inc., the company behind a widely used infrastructure automation tool, to enhance its vRealize cloud management software suite.

The deal was announced against the backdrop of VMware’s virtual VMworld event today, where the company debuted a number of new products. The terms of the acquisition aren’t being disclosed.

SaltStack is the primary backer of Salt, an open-source tool that countless information technology administrators worldwide use to carry out day-to-day maintenance work. The software, which has been downloaded more than 17 million times in 2020 alone, automates tasks such as installing software on virtual machines and fixing firewall configuration errors. Administrators can write scripts that allow them to configure large swaths of their company’s infrastructure at once instead of having to tweak systems individually.

Perhaps most importantly for VMware, Salt includes features for managing public cloud environments. It works with all the major infrastructure-as-a-service platforms and many smaller ones as well. Cloud support is also a feature of SaltStack’s commercial version of the tool, SaltStack Enterprise, which includes extra capabilities such as the ability to automatically fix configuration errors with minimal human input.

VMware will combine SaltStack’s technology with vRealize to provide an “end-to-end automation solution with integrated configuration management,” Ajay Singh, the head of the virtualization giant’s Cloud Management Business Unit, said in a blog post today.

Singh also provided a glimpse of VMware’s technical vision for SaltStack. The technology from the deal, he wrote, will extend the automation features in vRealize beyond infrastructure to the software inside companies’ virtual machines and containers.

Another focus of the acquisition is cybersecurity. VMware made a big push into this market last year when it bought Carbon Black Inc. for $2.7 billion and the SaltStack deal buys it yet more security capabilities. SaltStack has a commercial product called SaltStack SecOps that can scan a company’s infrastructure for vulnerable systems. 

With VMware’s considerable resources behind it, the SaltStack team will be in a position to speed up development on both its commercial products and open-source tool. Given the planned focus to add integrations with the vRealize cloud management suite, future product enhancements may place a particular emphasis on easing cloud operations.

At the same time, Singh stressed that the open-source Salt ecosystem will be preserved. “VMware invests in, contributes to, and builds on open source,” the VMware executive wrote. “VMware is committed to continuing SaltStack’s work on their projects after close and, with the help of SaltStack’s community leadership, VMware will support and invest to help grow the community.”

Singh added that vRealize will continue to work with the other configuration automation technologies besides Salt it currently supports.

Tools such as Salt play a central role in modern IT operations. Large-scale environments spanning private data centers and the public cloud are often so complex that configuring them without automation tools is outright impractical. By buying SaltStack, VMware will gain a bigger foothold in another important layer of enterprise IT environments.

Photo: Dell Technologies/Flickr