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Salesforce slurps uptime startup Coolan for global infrastructure scale-out

Why Salesforce needs this stuff when it's outsourced to AWS is anyone's guess

Salesforce.com has acquired a startup called Coolan that builds tools “to track and analyze infrastructure reliability for increased uptime and optimized efficiency.”

Coolan co-founder Amir Micahel revealed the deal, saying it was done so that his company can “help Salesforce optimize its infrastructure as it scales to support customer growth around the world.”

Which seems like a slightly odd job given that Salesforce recently decided to outsource its operations to Amazon Web Services, which we thought was supposed to take care of that whole mucky business of managing infrastructure.

But not, it seems, in ways that satisfy Salesforce as it rebuilds its rigs for global scale. Which leaves El Reg's cloud desk wondering just what kind of relationship Salesforce and AWS have struck.

Michael has got form working at scale: he worked on servers and data centres and Google and then moved to Facebook where he did similar work and founded the Open Compute Project (OCP). He says he'll keep working on OCP once he lands at Salesforce.

Which gets us wondering about AWS again, because the company has never been as open as other hyperscalers about its server designs. Might Michael's arrival hint at OCP involvement? Or at a colossal client like Salesforce being able to dictate terms for the kit it uses?

Or perhaps Salesforce just wants someone to help it design stuff that doesn't crash and lose data.

We'll be sure to ask Salesforce as it flicks the switch to AWS.

Financial details of the deal have not been made public. ®

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