Microsoft Acquires Former Microsoft Accelerator Startup MetricsHub

Microsoft (News - Alert) yesterday acquired MetricsHub, a company based out of Bellevue, Washington, that provides cloud monitoring, incident detection and workflows designed to fix common issues. This acquisition is particularly interesting because MetricsHub first came into contact with Microsoft as part of its Accelerator for Windows Azure program.

Indeed, it was last October that Microsoft announced 10 new additions to fund and mentor through the Accelerator program, one of which being MetricsHub. These startups spent the following three months in Seattle developing their ideas through mentoring from Microsoft and other industry sources.

The 10 startups then presented their final ideas to a panel of investors and companies in January.

Apparently, Microsoft was deeply impressed with what MetricsHub had to offer at the end of the Accelerator program. In fact, Microsoft is already providing a pre-release version in the Windows Azure store of MetricsHub's Active Cloud Monitoring program to all Windows Azure customers at no charge.

"Their approach to automating performance optimization, with little effort on the part of customers, addresses these issues," said Bob Kelly (News - Alert), corporate vice president of strategy and business development at Microsoft, of the MetricsHub software in a statement. "It also ensures customers are only paying for what they need and maximizing the services they’re using."

Fortunately, more of these kinds of developments are on the way as the Microsoft Accelerator program invited applications for a second batch of start-ups in India this past November, selecting a maximum of 15 to support and mentor. Ultimately, this batch of start-ups topped out at 13, including i7 Networks, a provider of clientless, non-intrusive security to enterprises in response to BYOD (bring your own device) initiatives.

These 13 startups were selected from 350 applications after several rounds of screening from a panel of judges made up of senior leaders from the industry and Microsoft.