VMware to Acquire Some EMC Ionix Software Assets

VMware, Inc. and EMC Corporation have entered into a definitive agreement for VMware to acquire certain software products and expertise from EMC’s Ionix IT management business, including solutions aimed at delivering improved management and deployment of servers and applications in a virtualized data center.

"Customers are increasingly leveraging virtualization as the foundation for modern IT architectures and their path to Cloud Computing," said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer, VMware. "Essential to this evolution is the ability to provide visibility and compliance from virtualized applications down to the underlying physical infrastructure. The acquisition of these Ionix products and expertise promises to further establish VMware vCenter as the next generation management platform for private cloud infrastructures."

The all-cash transaction of up to $200 million is expected to close in the second calendar quarter of 2010, and is not expected to have a material impact on either EMC’s or VMware’s previous expectations for 2010.

Under the terms of the agreement, VMware will acquire all technology and intellectual property of FastScale, Application Discovery Manager, Server Configuration Manager and Service Manager and will maintain engineering, marketing, sales and support operations in the United States, Europe, Israel, India and Australia. As part of the agreement, EMC will retain the Ionix brand and have full reseller rights to continue to offer customers the products acquired by VMware.

"EMC Ionix has focused on helping customers simplify and automate IT management in order to accelerate their journey to the private cloud," said Pat Gelsinger, President and COO, Information Infrastructure Products, EMC Corporation. "The storage and network infrastructure is a critical building block for realizing the benefits of a private cloud. EMC will continue to focus on ground-breaking Ionix management capabilities for the information infrastructure – including network, storage, and Vblock solutions. By focusing EMC efforts on these areas and partnering with VMware to advance their vCenter management strategy, we can jointly help our mutual customers more rapidly realize the full benefits of cloud computing."

The acquired EMC products and expertise will complement existing VMware development efforts and expand the VMware vCenter product family with capabilities to meet stringent compliance standards in a dynamic virtualized environment. This new capability will provide a holistic view of configuration compliance of complete IT services from underlying physical assets to applications. VMware plans to further optimize the acquired products for dynamic, VMware vSphere-based cloud infrastructure, to deliver unparalleled visibility, control and simplicity of enterprise IT management.

The VMware vCenter product family will continue to focus on reducing the operational burden and cost of IT management while protecting customers’ investments in existing management solutions. VMware will continue to work closely with key management partners, including EMC, to provide integrated solutions and interoperability between the entire VMware vCenter product family and management partner solutions in support of heterogeneous environments.