Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) today announced the acquisition of CloudPhysics alongside the launch of its infrastructure recommendation engine.

The companies did not disclose the purchase price, but CloudPhysics has raised $27.5 million over three funding rounds.

Founded in 2011, CloudPhysics is a software-as-a-service (SaaS)-based analytics platform designed to identify inefficiencies in the data center and suggest ways to address them by simulating the introduction of new technologies, resources, or services.

The platform ingests more than 200 usage metrics from virtual machines, physical servers, storage arrays, and network infrastructure to determine where inefficiencies may exist. Based on this data, the platform generates personalized reports on resource utilization and how different technologies may remedy the situation.

For example, if a customer is running up against storage bottlenecks, CloudPhysics can simulate how effective storage arrays from different vendors may be before the data center makes a commitment, according to the vendor.

CloudPhysics claims the software client can be installed on a system and begin collating insights in less than 15 minutes.

HPE sees CloudPhysics as a way to help its partners address customers' needs and accelerate the evaluation and procurement process. “Customers can accomplish their IT goals with more efficient IT infrastructure planning and procurement,” Tom Black, SVP and GM of HPE Storage, wrote in a blog post.

The idea being that customers can deploy the CloudPhysics client in their data center in order to identify what they need and whether a specific HPE product can address those needs.

Alongside the acquisition of CloudPhysics, HPE announced another infrastructure recommendation platform called the Software-Defined Opportunity Engine (SDOE).

The platform is based on HPE’s artificial intelligence operations (AIOps) platform Infosight, and deploys deep learning algorithms to generate recommendations for customers.

“With our new SDOE tool, customers receive fast, tailored quotes, informed by real-world data based on their own IT environment to optimize their infrastructure and accelerate their digital transformations,” Black wrote.

HPE is positioning SDOE as a tool to help its partners generate quotes that match up with their customer’s needs. And, according to Black, this can be accomplished in as little as 45 seconds.

HPE plans to expand beyond storage recommendations with the integration of CloudPhysics into the SDOE platform.