Cloudability, a cloud service that helps companies manage and optimize their cloud spending, announced today that it was buying DataHero, a cloud service that helps non-technical users generate data visualization.
It’s the fourth small startup Cloudability has bought since last March as the company uses its wallet to add engineering talent and build its customer base. It did not reveal the purchase price, but announced it was hiring all 12 DataHero employees. DataHero founder Chris Neumann will not be moving to Cloudability in the deal.
At first blush, DataHero might seem like a mismatch for Cloudability, but company CEO Mat Ellis says there are several overlapping factors here.
First of all, both companies sell cloud services and as such understand the SaaS business. That was a big component for Ellis who gets eight cloud engineers in the deal, along with several product managers and salespeople, all of whom get how to sell and deliver cloud services. This is all highly valuable to him as these types of positions are increasingly difficult to fill. “Every role fits into what we’ve been doing,” he said.
Secondly, the company shares more in common than it might seem with Cloudability looking at very specific data around cloud usage and optimization and DataHero looking more broadly at other types of data. Ellis can see his customers making use of additional data to get answers to more specific usage questions that his current product can’t answer.
Finally, the two companies share a common investor in Foundry Group, which brings its investment companies together a couple of times a year. As such, Ellis says he was familiar with some of the folks at DataHero and it made for an easier fit.
“We knew that we had very compatible people and cultures and thinking between the two companies, which made combining the companies less risky,” he said.
DataHero was founded in October, 2011 and has raised $10.25 million. The most recent round was $6.1 million last May led by Foundry.
Cloudability, which competes with companies like Cloudyn, was founded in February, 2011 and has raised almost $16 million plus another $4 million in debt, according to Ellis. It manages $100 million of cloud spending per month on Amazon Web Services, Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure and others.
Big clients include the likes of GE, Adobe and Uber. The company is based in Portland, Oregon and with today’s purchase now has 64 employees. The DataHero office in San Francisco will become Cloudability’s first Bay area office and could act as a base for future company expansion there.
In its previous acquisitions, Cloudability bought the assets of former competitor, CloudVertical on March 17, 2015, acquired the assets of Attribo on June 24, 2015 and bought RipFog in an acquihire on July 29, 2015.