Microsoft has acquired Mississauga-based Opalis. Details are available on the System Center blog and on TechNet. Rick Segal provides a summary of the investor involved, Peter Carrescia at VenGrowth. VenGrowth had invested $3.6M in March 2004 and had participated in an $8.5M round in November 2005 with Sierra Ventures & BDC. It’s a story for Canadian venture capital and a great story for entrepreneurs.

It also demonstrates some of the main reasons companies like Microsoft make acquisitions: shared customers. There is nothing greater than shared customers to drive a potential acquisition. When a product offering fills a gap in a companies product line and there are shared customers, it becomes a much stronger conversation about acquisition.

“Opalis has over 300 satisfied customers today, including many of the largest IT Managed Service Providers, demanding customers who deliver IT as a business and expect solutions that deliver results for their customers…Combined with Opalis, System Center will be able to interoperate with all of those legacy tools so customers can take a ‘land and migrate’ approach with Microsoft versus a ‘rip and replace’ approach as they build out their next generation virtualized data centers” – Todd DeLaughter

Here’s hoping that the Opalis team will stay in Mississauga, however, Microsoft tends to like to have the talent in Redmond. Congratulations Opalis, VenGrowth and BDC on a win.