IBM to acquire BLADE Network Technologies

http://www.bladenetwork.net/ibm-blade-pr.html

ARMONK, N.Y. — 27 Sept. 2010: IBM (NYSE: IBM) today announced it has entered into a definitive agreement to acquire BLADE Network Technologies (BLADE), a privately held company based in Santa Clara, CA. BLADE specializes in software and devices that route data and transactions to and from servers. The acquisition is anticipated to close in the fourth quarter of 2010, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions and applicable regulatory reviews. Financial terms were not disclosed.

BLADE provides blade server and top-of-rack switches as well as software to virtualize and manage cloud computing and other workloads. Customers include more than half of the companies on the Fortune 500 list across 26 industry verticals, including automotive, telecom services, education, government, healthcare, defense and finance. IBM and BLADE have worked together since 2002, resulting in thousands of joint clients. In fact, over 50 percent of IBM System x BladeCenters currently attach to or use BLADE products (1).

Firstly having met the guys over at BLADE Network Technologies, congratulations to them and IBM in this announcement, I wonder what innovations this announcement might bring to both organizations and the IBM servers and BladeCenter platforms. We’ll have to see if this might bring further out of the box innovations for the IBM server platforms in the high performance and virtualization space in terms of systems management and in the networking space.

Category: Servers