Oracle Extends Virtualization Lineup With Xsigo Acquisition

Oracle plans to combine Xsigo's products with the Oracle VM server virtualization technology, allowing it to offer a more complete set of virtualization technologies for cloud computing. Xsigo will become part of Oracle's systems portfolio, Redwood Shores, Calif.-based Oracle said Monday.

Xsigo's I/O Director hardware and Xsigo Server Fabric, the latter released last August, offer businesses a way to more efficiently manage multiple virtual machine connections throughout a data center and connect virtual machines to other resources such as servers and data storage systems.

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Xsigo, which sells exclusively through the channel, competes with data center fabrics sold by Cisco, Juniper and Brocade. Oracle said that while it expects to optimize the performance of Xsigo's products to work with Oracle's product lines, the company's products "will continue to support all heterogeneous environments and benefit any cloud deployment."

"The proliferation of virtualized servers in the last few years has made the virtualization of the supporting network connections essential," said John Fowler, Oracle executive vice president of systems, in a statement. "With Xsigo, customers can reduce the complexity and simplify management of their clouds by delivering compute, storage and network resources that can be dynamically reallocated on-demand."

Xsigo's products can reduce network infrastructure complexity by more than 70 percent, reduce connectivity costs by more than 50 percent and cut power consumption by more than 30 percent, according to Oracle.

Oracle did not disclose how much it's paying for Xsigo. The deal is subject to regulatory approval and other closing conditions. Xsigo's management and employees are expected to join Oracle after the acquisition is completed sometime this fall, Oracle said.

San Jose, Calif.-based Xsigo was founded in 2004 and is privately held. The company's customers include British Telecom, Carfax, eBay and Verizon.

PUBLISHED JULY 30, 2012