Novell to Buy Data Center Management Provider

Aiming to further its market position in the next-generation data center sector, Novell on Monday acquired data center management solution provider PlateSpin for $205 million. The deal is expected to close during Novell's second fiscal quarter, company officials said.

Privately-held Toronto-based PlateSpin sells server virtualization software for company data centers and provides server consolidation, disaster recovery, hardware migration and test lab automation. The company's PowerRecon Virtual Infrastructure Edition addresses key areas of virtual infrastructure management. With its chargeback and virtual growth reporting features, PowerRecon automatically converts IT resource usage data to billable values over time and delivers chargeback reports to business units. These VM growth reports help organizations control the expansion of virtual machines and help avoid virtual sprawl.

Novell said that the acquisition furthers its offerings in open source virtualization by providing tools that enable customers to move physical workloads to Xen-based virtual machines running on SUSE Linux Enterprise as well as other virtual platforms provided by VMware, Citrix, Microsoft and others.

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 through the continued operation of PlateSpin's Toronto facility as well as through a combination of PlateSpin and worldwide Novell offices and facilities.

PlateSpin alliance partners include Microsoft, of Redmond, Wash; Palo Alto-Calif.-based- VMWare; Armonk, N.Y.-based IBM; Dell, of Round Rock, Texas; and Virtual Iron of Lowell, Mass. Reseller partners include Computer Tech in Richardson, Texas; Terremark Worldwide, based in Miami; Advanced Micro Computer Specialists, of Horsham, Pa.; and Melillo Consulting in Somerset, N.J.

The buy is Novell's second acquisition in as many weeks. .The Waltham, Mass.-based company purchased SiteScape, a Maynard, Mass.-based open source collaboration vendor for an undisclosed amount. Novell said the buy enhanced its unified communications and collaboration strategy. SiteScape's Web-based solutions support knowledge management, project management, communities of practice, telework and business continuity.

In a statement, Ron Hovsepian, president and CEO of Novell said that the PlateSpin acquisition is central to the company's two-pronged enterprise Linux and IT management software strategy. With the addition of the PlateSpin product portfolio, Hovsepian said that Novell will be better able to "deliver the next generation infrastructure software that is at the core of the data center."

"Together, we will have the most comprehensive workload management solution that allows customers to monitor and analyze what to virtualize, provide the tools to seamlessly virtualize and unvirtualize workloads, automate the management of workloads, and provide the leading open source platform from which to run virtualized work," he said.