Microsoft invests in EMC owned Pivotal, makers of Cloud Foundry

Microsoft joined Ford in a $253 million investment round for the EMC company Pivotal, giving the company a current valuation of approximately $2.8 billion. Microsoft and Ford join other big-name companies, like GE and VMWare, in this third investment round. According to Re/code, Pivotal CEO Rob Mee indicated in an interview that Ford contributed a total of about $182 million.

Pivotal is a cloud software development company that offers tools and services to its customers to improve upon their own software capabilities. Ford is a current Pivotal customer and will use Pivotal’s software and services to build upon its own connected car applications. Microsoft is joining the latest investment round as many Microsoft customers have requested software support for Cloud Foundry, which is a Pivotal software service that deploys and manages software using Microsoft Azure.

In a press release, Pivotal outlined some highlights preceding the latest investment round involving Ford and Microsoft:

• Recently announced first-quarter 2016 revenue of $83 million, up 56% year over year
• Annualized recurring revenue* (ARR) of $116 million at March 31, 2016, up more than 200% year over year for our subscription software products—Cloud Foundry and Big Data Suite
• Cloud Foundry and Big Data Suite having crossed the $200 million and $100 million annual bookings run-rate milestones, respectively
• Over 2,000 employees and 17 offices worldwide

Microsoft’s Scott Guthrie, Executive Vice President of Microsoft’s Cloud and Enterprise Division, looks forward to Pivotal’s continued success using Azure:

“Our priority is ensuring that Microsoft Azure is the best place to run Java applications using Pivotal Cloud Foundry. Today’s announcement is a reflection of this commitment, along with our continued emphasis on choice and flexibility across our [Azure] cloud platform.”

Microsoft hopes to strengthen its Azure cloud computing platform even more in this latest investment round for Pivotal. Microsoft remains hopeful that more enterprise developers will continue to use Pivotal’s Cloud Foundry and Microsoft Azure when they need to develop software applications and services.