Oracle Buys Virtual Iron, Virtualization Management Startup Strengthening Oracle VM

Watch out VMware! Oracle buys Virtual Iron, terms undisclosed.

Founded in 2003, Virtual Iron provides cost-effective, production-ready server virtualization software for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The solutions deliver comparable capabilities to VMware without the cost and complexity. The company is led by an experienced management team and backed by top-tier investors including Highland Capital, Matrix Partners, Goldman Sachs, Intel Capital and SAP Ventures.

Market penetration of the virtualization market is still less than 10 percent with VMware controlling much of the market share.



Strategic Rationale for the deal:
• Adds advanced virtualization management technology to enhance Oracle VM
• Transaction expected to close this summer
• Virtual Iron is a provider of server virtualization management software
• Private company, headquartered in Lowell, Massachusetts
• Virtual Iron’s software enables dynamic resource management in virtualized data
centers
• Proven implementations across industries such as government, healthcare, financial
services, IT software and service, manufacturing and communications
• Virtual Iron extends Oracle VM software to provide comprehensive and
dynamic resource management across the full stack
• Oracle VM’s scalable, high performance server virtualization capabilities provide high
availability and rapid deployment for Oracle’s comprehensive software stack
• Virtual Iron is expected to add advanced dynamic resource management automation
and streamlined virtualization server configuration capabilities to Oracle VM


Industry trends are driving demand for virtualization
• IT organizations need to reduce operating expenses without sacrificing quality of
service
• Enterprises want to shorten the time required to deploy or reconfigure applications
• Companies are seeking “Green” strategies to reduce their carbon footprints and
decrease their total power consumption
• Virtualization changes the way applications are deployed and managed
• Pre-built virtual machines enable faster application deployment and configuration
• High availability is delivered by default for all hosted application components
• Dynamic resource management and rules-based automation facilitates more efficient
management of application service levels
• Consistent with Oracle’s strategy to provide comprehensive full stack
enterprise management across the virtual and physical enterprise
• Oracle VM with Virtual Iron management technology is expected to provide more
comprehensive, dynamic resource management capabilities
• Expected to enhance Oracle Enterprise Manager to be more agile in meeting
application service levels in virtualized environments