Novell wants PlateSpin for $205m

Canadian virtualization startup consumed

By Austin Modine • Get more from this author

Posted in Enterprise, 25th February 2008 19:51 GMT

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Novell wants to buy the Toronto-based virtualization firm PlateSpin for $205m cash. And you know what, they probably will.

The Linux vendor said the to-be-acquired company will continue to operate in its Canadian headquarters, with business cards swapped to the Linux vendor's Systems and Resource Management business unit. The deal is expected to close during Novell's 2008 second fiscal quarter.

PlateSpin sells three main products: PlateSpin Convert, a set of physical-to-virtual and virtual-to-physical tools; PowerRecon, software for billing and chargeback management; and PlateSpin Forge, a recovery appliance server with pre-installed PowerConvert and PowerRecon controlled by a web-based GUI.

"The PlateSpin acquisition will be a cornerstone of our two-pronged enterprise Linux and IT management software strategy," said Novell CEO Ron Hovsepian in a statement, and mixing his metaphors.

The relatively unknown PlateSpin (or as Novell puts it, "data center management leader PlateSpin," should get along fine with Novell's current virtualization products.

According to Novell head marketeer John Dragoon, PlateSpin's software will fill a virtualization management gap on the company's ZENworks Orchestrator for SUSE Linux Enterprise with the Xen hypervisor.

Dragoon said Orchestrator lacks a decent way at the moment to spot which workloads are the best candidates for virtualization and an ability to convert workloads from physical to virtual.

Novell will give additional details about the purchase during its fiscal Q1 2008 earnings call this Thursday. ®

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