In what has become a VMworld tradition, VMware kicked off the annual event this morning by announcing an acquisition: SaltStack, an open-source based automation software provider.

The companies didn’t disclose financial details. SaltStack, founded in 2013, raised $27.9 million in three funding rounds.

In a blog post about the acquisition, Ajay Singh, SVP and GM of VMware’s Cloud Management Business Unit, said SaltStack will broaden VMware’s vRealize automation capabilities for software configuration management, infrastructure, and networking across on-premises and cloud environments.

“Once closed, SaltStack will help us to complete our automation story, enabling us to extend our automation capabilities beyond infrastructure to the entire application stack,” he wrote. “This will include the software and packages inside virtual machines and containers.”

SaltStack also plays into VMware’s security strategy because it automates configuration compliance and vulnerability management.

Additionally, SaltStack’s automation product is built on Python and other open source projects, which Singh called “one of the most compelling aspects of SaltStack” and committed to “continuing SaltStack’s work on their projects after the close.”

In an effort to target developers, which historically haven’t been VMware’s key customer base, the virtualization giant has been steadily boosting its open source contributions in large part via its Kubernetes-focused acquisitions and Tanzu portfolio.

“We’re saying to the developer themselves, we want to be one of those cool kids that are very much dedicated to open source upstream compatibility,” VMware CEO Pat Gelsinger said at the Citi Global Technology virtual conference earlier this month. “And we’re now the No. 2 contributor to the open source community around Kubernetes, and well on our way to be a leader in so many different aspects of that.”