Avocent Buys OSA Technologies

The connectivity solutions vendor said this week that it acquired OSA Technologies, a San Jose, Calif.-based maker of embedded management firmware and software for Intelligent Platform Management Interface (IPMI) products, for about $100 million in cash and stock.

With OSA's expertise now in hand, Avocent said it plans to accent its core KVM (keyboard, video and mouse) switch business and suite of embedded solutions to provide a central-server management interface that enables automated monitoring, configuration and provisioning.

A key to the acquisition is Dell's recent agreement to incorporate OSA IPMI 2.0 in its next generation of Dell servers, a deal that will now transfer to Avocent.

"OSA's innovative technologies extend current industry standards to enable true 'lights out' remote management of server-room devices," John Cooper, president and CEO of Huntsville, Ala.-based Avocent, said in a statement.