On Thursday of this week, VMware closed its acquisition of CloudHealth Technologies, extending cloud management beyond VMware's previous capabilities in private and hybrid cloud and into the public cloud.  VMware partners will soon be able to offer the cloud management platform as an integrated offering to their clients.  While terms of the deal weren't discussed, Reuters put the price tag at approximately $500 million.

As part of the announcement, VMware stated:

We are pleased to share that we officially closed our acquisition of CloudHealth today, bringing their industry-leading cloud operations platform to our growing cloud services portfolio. With more than $5B in annual public cloud spend being managed by CloudHealth today, this acquisition significantly advances VMware's strategy of enabling customers to run, manage, connect and better secure any application on any cloud.

CloudHealth said it is joining forces with VMware to solve a pressing business challenge: enterprise organizations around the world battle operational complexity as they scale their cloud environments.  And together, they will give customers and partners access to a portfolio of cloud services that delivers a consistent and actionable view into cost and resource management, security, and performance across multiple clouds.

As an independent startup, CloudHealth is said to have already amassed more than 3,000 customers around the world.  To help grow that even further, VMware will add several components to the platform, such as VMware Secure State, Wavefront analytics, and their recently announced cloud automation services.

VMware added that CloudHealth will continue its mission of helping customers run applications and infrastructure in the cloud in the most cost effective and efficient manner.