Juniper Networks Inc. said Thursday it has purchased AppFormix Inc., buying what it hopes will be a new revenue stream from customers moving to the cloud.

San Jose-based AppFormix sells software for automating the management of large-scale cloud environments. The deal comes four months after the networking company bought silicon photonics maker Aurrion Inc. for an undisclosed amount.

There’s no immediately apparent link between AppFormix and Juniper’s core network equipment business as there was with Aurrion, which developed transceivers for use in data center switches. But Ankur Singla, a vice president at the hardware supplier’s office of the chief technology officer, explained in a blog post that the deal addresses an important piece of its plans to address the shifting nature of enterprise technology spending.

More and more companies are deploying mission-critical workloads that have historically run behind the firewall on remote infrastructure-as-a-service platforms. Like many other data center suppliers, Juniper is witnessing the trend firsthand in its installed base. Another important segment of the company’s clientele uses various private cloud technologies such as OpenStack and Kubernetes to support their applications.

The software that it’s gaining from AppFormix will enable the network equipment maker to open a new revenue stream by helping these customers streamline day-to-day operations. As Singla detailed in his post, the startup’s platform can collect real-time activity data from a cloud deployment and automatically find areas for improvement using machine learning algorithms. The results are displayed in a visual dashboard that enables administrators to quickly find the best way course of action for tackling the situation at hand. 

An information technology department tasked with deploying a new application, for instance, could use the information provided by AppFormix’s platform to identify what infrastructure adjustments need to be performed beforehand. And the software also makes it possible to spot routine operational problems such as underutilized hardware. Administrators can apply the necessary changes using a built-in orchestration engine designed to automate resource allocation in cloud environments.

Juniper plans to pair AppFormix’s software with its Contrail line of software-defined networking products after the acquisition completes. The lineup is based on technology that the company obtained through its 2012 purchase of Contrail Systems Inc., which was founded by none other than Ankur Singla. The integration effort should go fairly smoothly from a technical standpoint since AppFormix already provides support for the upstream OpenContrail project in its platform.

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