IBM has said it has reached an agreement to acquire cloud application management startup Instana for an undisclosed sum.

The Chicago-based company’s main product is a service that can monitor the performance of complex cloud applications over both public and private environments, on-premise and mobile devices. It has an ‘observability platform’ that can analyse cloud applications to both prevent and fix IT issues, such as slow response times or even services that are fully down.

IBM says it plans to integrate Instana’s system into services such as Watson AIOps, where AI would be used to trigger alerts and speed up IT remedies. Such a service would eliminate the need for employees to manually monitor and manage the applications, freeing them up to focus on more innovative or “higher-value” work, according to IBM.

The deal represents IBM’s first major cloud move since its decision to fully separate its cloud and infrastructure units by the end of 2021, spinning the latter off as a public company. It’s thought that the acquisition of Instana will be used to offer customers new ways to manage complex hybrid and multi-cloud environments, particularly as the service can be used for monitoring containerised environments running Kubernetes.

“Our clients today are faced with managing a complex technology landscape filled with mission-critical applications and data that are running across a variety of hybrid cloud environments – from public clouds, private clouds and on-premises,” said Rob Thomas, senior vice president, cloud and data platform at IBM.

“IBM’s acquisition of Instana is yet another important step that we are taking to provide companies with the most complete portfolio of AI-automated solutions to tackle this enormous challenge and help prevent unforeseen IT incidents that can cost a business in lost revenue and reputation.”