Nutanix Inc. is continuing to expand beyond its roots in hyperconverged infrastructure, which uses software to combine computing, storage and networking in one unit, with an agreement today to buy Netsil Inc. for an undisclosed amount.

Netsil makes a monitoring and visualization platform for cloud applications that enables organizations to see all services and their dependencies on a network without the need for additional coding. It emerged from stealth mode last September to target organizations that are making extensive use of containers and microservices to improve deployment flexibility between on-premises infrastructure and the cloud. Containers are software that allows applications to run unchanged across many kinds of computer environments.

The company provides a real-time map of all component containers and their dependencies using a non-intrusive approach that installs a single agent on each host and then discovers every container, Kubernetes pod, host and service endpoint automatically, along with their interactions. In addition to analyzing communication packets to determine how services are interacting, the product also pinpoints protocols and system-level information such as memory and processor use.

Netsil (“listen” spelled backwards) is targeting a complexity problem that has emerged from the growing use of containers and microservices. Although their portability and transience offer greater flexibility than traditional, siloed applications, they also defy traditional systems monitoring and management tools, which were built to work with stateful applications, those that retain data from one use session to the next. Netsil is attacking that problem by focusing on the network layer, which it says is the most reliable way to map cloud applications and find areas of congestion.

“They have a groundbreaking technology that’s a scale-out network tap that understands the application payload, then reverse-engineers it and draws out the topology and all the dependencies,” said Sunil Potti, Nutanix’s chief product and development officer. “They understand how applications behave and what their [service-level agreements] are, and do it in a non-invasive manner.”

Nutanix started out selling hyperconverged appliances, but is now shifting to a software-only strategy with a mission to “make computing invisible,” Potti said. Netsil bits into the strategy of making data centers invisible by “converging not just compute and storage, but virtualized networks as well,” he said. “The idea is to leverage application discovery and tie it closely with networks and security in the Nutanix cloud.”

Potti said Netsil’s technology will be discontinued as a licensed product and folded into the Nutanix Enterprise Cloud. Existing customers will continue to be supported.

Netsil has raised $5.7 million in funding, according to Crunchbase. The technology emerged from work done by Chief Executive Harjot Gill and his brother and Chief Architect Tanveer Gill at the University of Pennsylvania.

Founded in 2012, the company attracted early-stage funding from the National Science Foundation and a core of enterprise customers before raising venture capital. The company’s chief operating officer, Shariq Rizvi, was previously director of engineering for advertising at Twitter Inc.

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