Dell said Thursday that it has agreed to buy Scalent in a bid to add enhanced virtualization capabilities to its data center management solution.
Once the acquisition closes, which Dell expects to happen sometime this month, the company plans to integrate Scalent's technology into its Advanced Infrastructure Manager (AIM) solution.
Dell declined to discuss terms of the acquisition.
Scalent, Palo Alto, Calif., is a developer of software that helps customers create a dynamic IT Infrastructure that quickly adjusts to the changing needs of business. The company's software is typically available in pre-packaged configurations from such vendors as Dell, Red Hat, EMC, Unisys, QLogic, Emulex, Cisco, VMware, Oracle, and Epoch Concepts.
Key features of the Scalent software include the ability to rapidly provision new servers, rapidly deploy virtualization technology from any number of vendors, provide automatic high availability for servers, and build cloud infrastructures.
Dell AIM targets the simplification of data center management by enabling a single administrator to dynamically allocate compute, storage and network resources for physical and virtual application workloads.
The move comes less than a month after Dell unveiled plans to work with customers to help them build converged infrastructures.
Converged infrastructure is the tight integration of server, storage, networking, virtualization, and other resources tied together as part of a single-vendor data center solution.
Such a solution can be managed as a single system. Its resources can be dynamically allocated as needed, providing higher resource utilization and availability than possible with static infrastructures.
Scalent works with industry-standard servers, Ethernet switches, and Fibre Channel switches to help customers transition to a highly-dynamic data center using existing infrastructure investments via its open architecture, according to Dell.
Dell has already made Scalent a part of Dell AIM, a Dell spokesperson said. And, since nearly all of Scalent's partners are also Dell partners, Dell plans to continue to make the Scalent technology available to those other vendors as long as those vendors wish to use it, the spokesperson said.
For Dell, the acquisition helps assure the stability of Scalent's offering while enhancing Dell's enterprise solutions portfolio, the spokesperson said.
All Scalent's employees, including its executive team, are expected to join Dell once the acquisition is closed, the spokesperson said.
