Salesforce Buys Data Center Optimization Startup Coolan

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Salesforce has acquired Coolan, a data center management software startup co-founded by Amir Michael, a former Facebook and Google hardware engineer and one of the founders of the Open Compute Project, Facebook’s open source data center and hardware design initiative.

Salesforce’s initial plan is to use Coolan’s technology to optimize its infrastructure, Michael said in a blog post announcing the deal. It’s unclear whether the San Francisco-based seller of cloud-based business software has any commercial plans for the startup’s software platform that uses analytics and machine learning to minimize the cost of data center infrastructure and maximize its reliability.

“Building a startup is an awesome journey, and I’m incredibly proud of the work we’ve done,” Michael wrote. “Once the transaction has closed, the Coolan team will help Salesforce optimize its infrastructure as it scales to support customer growth around the world. I will continue my work with the Open Compute Project (OCP) to further its mission of making hardware open, efficient and scalable.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed. A Salesforce spokesperson referred us to Michael’s blog post in response to a request for comment.

Examples of things Coolan’s software helps with include answering questions like when is the best time to retire a server or what is the most efficient server power supply type and configuration. The platform relies on historical data collected from Coolan customers’ data centers to help companies make better infrastructure decisions.

Salesforce has recently been making efforts to transform its data center strategy to introduce more standardization on fewer types of servers and more automation. This strategy is similar to the way other internet and cloud services giants, such as Facebook and Google, have been building out their infrastructure.

We interviewed Michael earlier this year at length on his thoughts about the future of data center hardware and the future of Open Compute in smaller enterprise IT shops. Read the full interview here.