Toronto based PlateSpin has accepted Novell’s $205 million buy out offer. PlateSpin markets software that manages data center processes on virtual and physical hosts.
Novell acquired PlateSpin in hopes that the software portfolio is serve as a corner stone for the company’s virtualization strategy. The new strategy is designed to deliver the newest in infrastructure software that companies demand in order to power the data centers of the future.
The Chief Executive of Novell, Ron Hovsepian said that the workload management software portfolio will allow the monitoring and analyzing of tools that will automate workload management and allow companies to use the world’s most popular open source platform to operate virtualized workloads.
PlateSpin has developed technology that allows for the improvement of the quality and speed of disaster recovery, server consolidation and data center relocation Novell expects the purchase of PlateSpin to allow it to offer new customers the tools they need to move physical workloads to virtual machines that run using SUSE Linux Enterprise. Citrix, VMWare and Microsoft virtual platforms will also be supported. The Novell/PlateSpin merger will also provide support for other virtual machine vendors as well.
Novel has been poised to enter the virtual workload management field for some time, but the company lacked some important virtualization abilities that made gaining customers difficult, said John Dragoon, Novell’s Chief Marketing Officer. Dragoon pointed out that Novell lacked a way to assess and monitor which physical workloads were good candidates for the virtulization of its work.
In addition, Novell’s platform lacked a method to allow businesses to recover from data disasters that was both affordable and elegant. Novell also needed a way to allow business users to protect workloads in data centers from unplanned power outages. Dragoon said that PlateSpin’s products like Forge, PowerRecon and PowerConvert were designed from the ground up to be able to handle recovery and protection tasks.
Novell said that through its acquisition of the technology from PlateSpin, the company will be able to provide information technology departments with a product suite that has been fully integrated to automate hardware upgrades, server relocation and server consolidation. Novell has lacked the technology necessary to offer such benefits to its customers. PlateSpin will continue to operate under its own name, but will have access to the financial benefits of being under the Novell umbrella.
Data center optimization requires automated management platforms that allow companies to move workloads said the research director of IDC, Stephen Elliot. “Over the next three years, heterogeneous virtualization architectures will be the norm for most IT organizations,” Elliot said. “As such they must purchase data-center management solutions that offer an ongoing opportunity for lowering operational costs as well as integrating and managing virtual machines across both server and storage infrastructures for greater control and visibility between hardware and the virtual software tiers.”
Development and marketing of workload management solutions to an international customer base by PlateSpin will continue after the buy is finalized when Novell’s business quarter ends on April 30.
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May 5th, 2008 at 10:32 am
Interesting move by Novell, we use PlateSpin at work as part of our move to a virtual platform, P2V (Physical to Virtual) and PlateSpin in particular was very useful.
Its good that neither VMWare or Microsoft bought out the company, should mean that hopefully it will stay pretty much platform neutral.
May 20th, 2008 at 11:59 pm
Platespin offered the services to datacenter which were very much satisfied. Now the move by Novell is quite expected. Obviously no one will hesitate to buy a firm which is performing well in the market. Hope that Novell will give a better service in all aspects after the deal is finished.
May 25th, 2008 at 11:11 am
There have been a lot of mergers and buyouts the past few years now that I think about it. It’s a good thing in terms of information, as companies will hoard information that others can use, when it would benefit the customer the most. *coughmicrosoftcough*
June 22nd, 2008 at 10:25 pm
Very interesting information to read. It is about time that Novell did something to make their name recognized beyond the people using their software or the techies that have the knowledge. Novell has been known for good service, so that will help them and since they are network people, it will be very good for them in the data center area.