Virtualization.com

News and insights from the vibrant world of virtualization and cloud computing

Acquisitions

Novell Picks Up PlateSpin For $ 205 Million in Cash

by 3 Comments

Today, Novell announced that it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire PlateSpin for $205 million using current cash. The acquisition is expected to close during Novell’s second fiscal quarter 2008 subject to the satisfaction of closing conditions.

PlateSpin will be integrated into Novell’s Systems and Resource Management business unit. As part of this business unit, PlateSpin will continue to develop and market its solutions to a global customer base. This will be done through the continued operation of PlateSpin’s Toronto facility as well as through a combination of PlateSpin and Novell offices and facilities around the globe.

virtuailzation-novell-platespin1.png

All key PlateSpin management are staying through FY08 and many have accepted permanent employment at Novell. PlateSpin founder and CEO, Stephen Pollack, will take on the duties of VP, Business Development for the SRM business unit.

From the official release:

“The combination of Novell’s platform and automation management with PlateSpin’s leading solutions for workload relocation, protection and provisioning will give customers the agility to cross physical and virtual boundaries so IT can work together. Both organizations are focused on helping customers maximize the strategic value of the heterogeneous data center. Novell and PlateSpin will deliver products for complete workload lifecycle management and optimization for Linux, UNIX, and Windows operating systems in the physical and virtual data center.”

[Source: CNN Money]

Former Microsoft Executive Paul Maritz Joins EMC To Head Cloud Computing Initiatives

by 3 Comments

 

virtualization-paulmaritz.jpg

Microsoft’s cloud computing team will not be happy to learn about this: Paul Maritz, former senior executive at Microsoft, is to become president of EMC‘s cloud computing initiative, which competes directly with the Redmond-based software giant.

Maritz is rejoining the corporate world after seven years of dabbling in startups and philanthropy, now that his company Pi Corporation, a Seattle-based information management provider, has been acquired by EMC. The 100-person company will continue to operate as a standalone entity, similar to the way EMC lets VMWare run independently.

When the deal is finalized, Maritz will become president and general manager of EMC’s new Cloud Infrastructure and Services Division reporting to CEO Joe Tucci.The release reads:

“He will continue to directly oversee development and operations for Pi, along with other key elements of EMC’s cloud computing strategy, which include the EMC Fortress SaaS infrastructure, the Mozy online backup service and other upcoming EMC cloud infrastructure systems and software offerings under development.”

EMC wouldn’t say how much it paid in the all-cash deal, but said it should be done within the first quarter of 2008 and will “be dilutive by $.01 per diluted share in 2008.”

[Source: The Seattle Times]

Sun Aims To Virtualize Web 2.0 Startups. From LAMP to SAMP?

by 1 Comment

Sun MicroSystems aims to equip the next generation of Internet companies (read: Web 2.0 startups) with its hardware and software and will offer virtualization products to help them keep their costs to a minimum, make their data centers more flexible, and give developers multiple target environments.

virtualization-jonathan-schwartz-sun.jpg

“You can see a connection to developing under VirtualBox and moving the software to a server running xVM,” Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz said; “xVM is Sun’s Xen-based hypervisor, due in June. Sun views a virtualized development environment as a way to capture developer loyalty. The company already offers developers incentives to use Java, namely its NetBeans tools and the PHP, Ruby, and Perl scripting languages through the Sun Developer Network. It registered an additional 1 million developers on its network in 2007”, Schwartz said, “and building a relationship with those developers is key to getting more of its software into Web 2.0 companies”.

As Sun is set to acquire open source relational database MySQL, the company seems determined to turn “LAMP” (which stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PPHP / Perl) into “SAMP”, evidently substituting Linux for Solaris in the pet name for every open source developer’s favorite tool set.

Sun also has a special program with custom offerings for startups dubbed Startup Essentials, which it has recently expanded to Canada, France and Germany.

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , , , , , , , ,

[Via InformationWeek]

VMWare’s Mike DiPetrillo Openly Critical About Citrix – Xensource

by 1 Comment

If you thought the leaked internal VMWare memo criticizing the partnership between Microsoft and Citrix was bad, get a load of this: Mike DiPetrillo, Specialist System Engineer of Industry Research and Competitive Analysis at VMWare (VMW) and one of VMWare’s bloggers, posted a rather critical blog post on his personal space yesterday attacking Citrix’ acquisition of Xensource.

Other than calling Xensource a ‘good little company’, DiPetrillo says he’s still trying to figure out why Citrix paid $ 500 million for it in the first place.

“In Q3 XenSource announced 1,000 customers. On the call they said they added another 400 customers. Good growth! That puts the total at 1,400 customers. Then came the partner count – 1,817 partners certified to sell XenSource. Hmmm. So now we have 1,817 partners trying to get business from the 1,400 customers that total $2 million in revenue (that’s $1,100 in revenue per partner). Good days to be a Citrix partner.”

He goes on to say:

“OK. So the strategy is go and spend $500 million on a company that’s losing money, switch all of your current successful products and branding over to the losing company, and then exit the market when your larger partner moves into the market. Is this the end of Citrix then? Terminal Services in Windows Server 2008 closes the gap pretty nicely. Virtual Desktops are also taking large chunks of market share. Time will tell where Citrix ends up.”

In the end, it’s fair critiscm and DiPetrillo does raise some good points, but coming from a VMWare employee (although published on his personal blog), the article is bound to make some people frown.

[Via Channel Marker]

Technorati Tags: , , , , , , ,

Company Index: VMWare

Sun Acquires innotek, VirtualBox Desktop Virtualization To Extend The Sun xVM platform

by 5 Comments

Sun Microsystems has just announced , in a surprising move, the acquisition of German desktop virtualization technology provider innotek , makers of the well-known VirtualBox family.

VirtualBox is a general-purpose full virtualizer for x86 hardware. Targeted at server, desktop and embedded use, it is one of the only professional-quality virtualization solutions built on Open Source technology.

virtualization-innotek-sun-virtualbox.png

The acquisition by Sun, in essence a stock purchase agreement with undisclosed financial details, is a definite winner. With over four million downloads since January 2007, innotek’s VirtualBox product has been quickly established as one of the leading developer desktop virtualization platforms. As part of the Sun xVM portfolio, VirtualBox will have the support of Sun’s global development community, field resources and partners to make VirtualBox “even more compelling to developers and end users, driving greater adoption across a broad set of communities”.

From the press release:

“By enabling developers to more efficiently build, test and run applications on multiple platforms, VirtualBox will extend the Sun xVM platform onto the desktop and strengthen Sun’s leadership in the virtualization market.”

“VirtualBox provides Sun with the perfect complement to our recently announced Sun xVM Server product,” said Rich Green, executive vice president, Sun Software. “Where Sun xVM Server is designed to enable dynamic IT at the heart of the datacenter, VirtualBox is ideal for any laptop or desktop environment and will align perfectly with Sun’s other developer focused assets such as GlassFish, OpenSolaris, OpenJDK and soon MySQL as well as a wide range of community open source projects, enabling developers to quickly develop, test and deploy the next generation of applications.”

The acquisition is also another sign EMEA is marking its territory in virtualization land.

Funding For CiRBA and Virtual Iron, Dell Completes Acquisition of EqualLogic

by 1 Comment

More interesting news today:

CiRBA Raises $12 Million With Sigma Partners

CiRBA Inc., today announced that it has raised $12 million in its second round of institutional funding led by Sigma Partners . Existing investors including Edgestone Capital Partners and others also participated in the round. The funding will enable CiRBA to further accelerate growth on a global scale, with investments in sales, marketing and product development.

Virtual Iron Capitalizes on Strong Market Momentum, Raises $20 Million in New Equity Financing

Virtual Iron Software, a provider of enterprise server virtualization software, today announced that it has secured $20 million in new venture equity financing. The funding, provided at an increased valuation, will be used to accelerate product development and expand global sales, marketing and distribution efforts. The investment brings Virtual Iron’s total venture funding to $65 million in invested equity capital and includes Highland Capital Partners, Matrix Partners, Goldman Sachs, Intel Capital and SAP Ventures.

Dell Completes EqualLogic Acquisition

Today Dell completed the EqualLogic acquisition, a leading provider of high-performance storage area network (SAN) solutions designed for virtualization and ease-of-use. The purchase extends Dell’s leadership in simplifying IT for customers.

“Customers face extreme challenges with data growth. Storage solutions that use existing infrastructure, install in minutes not days, manage themselves, can grow easily as needs increase and plug into the virtualized IT ecosystem will help businesses with their storage needs. EqualLogic provides these storage solutions and that’s the incredible value that Dell will now be able to deliver to our customers.  With Dell’s PartnerDirect channel, we will unleash the power of iSCSI and virtualization to redefine the economics of storing and processing data.”