HPE buys open-source software startup Scytale

San Jose-based enterprise technology solutions provider HPE (Hewlett Packard Enterprise) has acquired security, distributed systems and open-source software startup Scytale to boost its edge-to-cloud platform as a service strategy.

The financial specifics were not disclosed in the blog post announcement.

“This acquisition also represents HPE’s ongoing transformation, part of which is to embrace and contribute to open source projects in the Cloud Native Computing Foundation and elsewhere,” HPE said.

Scytale was founded in 2017 by Sunil James, Emiliano Berenbaum and Andrew Jessup, with a team of engineers who were part of companies that worked on cloud-based applications of Amazon Web Services, Google, Okta, PagerDuty, Splunk and Duo Security.

“I further observed (that) HPE was compiling experts (through their Cape Networks, Cray and Plexxi acquisitions) to tackle hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity under the cloudless computing banner. As time progressed, it became more apparent to me how directionally aligned Scytale and HPE were,” Scytale’s James said in a separate blog post.

Cape Networks, Cray and Plexxi are HPE’s earlier acquisitions that offer solutions to tackle hybrid and multi-cloud connectivity -- similar to Scytale.

The company’s product offerings include its open-source projects based on Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s SPIFFE (Secure Production Identity Framework For Everyone) and SPIRE open-source projects, a SPIRE extension called Scytale Enterprises and an annual support subscription for bug fixes and security patches Scytale Essentials.

Under HPE, Scytale will continue to help steward SPIFFE and contribute to HPE's plans to deliver a dynamic, open and secure edge-to-cloud platform, James said.

SPIFFE is a set of open-source standards for securely identifying software systems in dynamic and heterogeneous environments. SPIRE is a production-ready implementation of SPIFFE. Together, the projects deliver a foundational capability, service identity for cloud and container-deployed microservices, an explainer on Scytale’s website states.