Oracle To Buy Virtual Iron?

The rumour is spreading , but so far no official feedback from Oracle.

Local Techwire reports that there are talks between Oracle and Virtual Iron ongoing and that Oracle is aiming at Virtual Iron to expand its server virtualization management platform.

According to Local Techwire Katherine Egbert, a Jefferies & Company analyst who closely follows Red Hat, say that

It’s likely Oracle would buy Virtual Iron to improve its prospects in the rapidly growing server virtualization management market and to keep Virtual Iron technology out of competitive hands,

and note that Virtual Iron is the “fifth-largest server virtualization vendor.”

She also noted that Virtual Iron’s technology is “complementary to Oracle Virtual Machine” while also cheaper than market leader VMware.

Virtual Iron, according to TechVibes founded in 2003 , already has a questionable Virtualization History, as I wrote earlier in Open Source Virtualization Today , Virtual Iron initially had a Single Server Image implementation they sold under the Virtual Iron VFe productname , but somewhere in 2005 they changed gears and became the supplier of a server virtualization & virtual infrastructure management solution , a Virtualization Solution based on Open Source Technologies, or back then a Xen Management Solution.

Fact is that when RedHat moves towards KVM , it leaves a gap to fill for Oracle which with OracleVM today is putting it’s eggs in the Xen basket. Oracle just hosted the Xen Summit and has Wim Coekaerts on the Xen Advisory Board. So adding a company like Virtual Iron to it’s portofolio to manage those Xen based VM’s absolutely makes sense.

If or when that will happen is still the question 🙂

But we’ll keep you posted..