In a move to boost its software-defined data center (SDDC) business, Ericsson is acquiring NodePrime, a startup that does data center infrastructure management.

Ericsson was already an investor in NodePrime, which has raised about $7 million. Ericsson will now acquire 100 percent of its operations in San Francisco. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

NodePrime’s software will be integrated into the Ericsson Hyperscale Datacenter System 8000, a converged hardware platform that enables automated configuration of data center hardware platforms.

NodePrime’s technology allows data centers to adopt distributed infrastructure and to migrate to hyperscale infrastructure. It provides a single vision of the data center through the collection of trillions of associated metrics.

According to SDxCentral’s 2016 Converged Data Center Survey in January and February of 2016, when asked what the most important attributes organizations were looking for in their converged data center solutions, 55 percent of respondents replied automation and orchestration, followed by lower capital costs (35 percent) and interoperability with other virtualized systems (30 percent).

"We at Ericsson believe in innovation coming from the Silicon Valley area and will continue to increase our presence and distribution of such innovation," says Anders Lindblad, head of Ericsson’s cloud and IP business unit.