VMware Buys Software Startup B-hive Networks

B-hive calls its solutions Transaction Intelligent Networking technology, which is used in its products such as B-hive Conductor. The solution monitors end-user application performance, measuring criteria such as response time. When an application problem has been detected, the solution automatically maps which infrastructure component the application is dependent upon, and identifies the problem, such as lack of memory or processing power.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based VMware plans to integrate B-hive with the rest of its product portfolio. B-hive will be able to trigger changes in resource allocation among virtual machines in order to dynamically allocate more resources to applications experiencing performance degradation. B-hive will also be used to alleviate performance issues is by triggering VMware's VMotion capability to migrate live, running virtual machines from one physical server to another.

Bogomil Balkansky, director of product marketing for VMware, said the B-hive acquisition is a good fit as the virtualization market matures.

"This is a very topical acquisition for us," said Balkansky. "The adoption of virtualization started with smaller infrastructures like file servers, and now virtualization is used more and more with even the most mission critical apps. These are the kind of apps that end users really care about and spend a lot of time on. IT end users can become very impatient, so being able to provide proactive management is an important capability for us."

B-hive was founded in 2005 by Yoav Dembak, CEO and Asaf Wexler, CTO, and is headquartered in San Mateo, Calif. with principal R&D facilities in Herzliya, Israel. The start-up received backing from venture capital firms Venrock Associates and Index Ventures.

At the close of the acquisition, Dembak and Wexler will join VMware in the Palo Alto office and will be responsible for technical and go-to-marketing for B-hive technology within VMware.

VMware's Balkansky said that with the B-hive purchase, VMware will expand its global operations using B-hive's Israeli-based R&D offices.

"This gives us a toehold in Israel which has a hotbed of engineering talent and we plan to expand there over time," he said.