EMC Snaps Up Data Center Management Software Vendor

EMC said the acquisition will extend its ability to manage customers' entire IT information across storage, networks, servers and applications, and help them automate and control management across physical and virtual data centers.

EMC already OEMs technology from Configuresoft, and acquired the company for strategic reasons, said Bob Quillin, senior director of product marketing for resource management software at EMC.

"You can only go so far with an OEM relationship to virtualize and automate data centers," Quillin said.

While EMC has the majority stake in server virtualization software vendor VMware, the Configuresoft technology can be applied to a wide range of data center management activities, Quillin said.

"EMC is looking at this across the entire data center, including the physical and virtual sides related to storage and networking," he said. "It's related to the end-to-end data center."

Configuresoft, Colorado Springs, Colo., offers a variety of change and configuration management applications. These include applications to provide visibility into changes and compliance across the enterprise, manage and upgrade security, provide visibility and management of VMware ESX infrastructures, manage compliance and integrate with service desks.

The Configuresoft technology works in conjunction with EMC's Control Center application for managing storage resources, and with similar technology for network configuration and change management that the company got with its acquisition a couple years ago of Voyence.

Managing the entire data center from the storage, server and network perspective is a part of the overall vision EMC presented last week at the company's EMC World conference.

EMC said the acquisition of Configuresoft is expected to close in June, but did not release financial details of the transaction.

Upon completion of the acquisition, Configuresoft will become a part of EMC's Resource Management Software group.