Novell to Acquire Data Center Management Leader PlateSpin By VSM News Staff published: Monday, February 25 2008
Novell to extend interoperability leadership with the
industry's first solutions to help enterprises manage workloads across both
physical and virtual infrastructures
WALTHAM, Mass. , Monday, 25 February 2008 -- Novell today announced it has entered into a definitive
agreement to acquire PlateSpin Ltd. This acquisition will extend Novell's
leadership position in the next-generation data center by providing the only
solution to dynamically deliver business critical services across both physical
and virtual infrastructures. PlateSpin offers extensive solutions for the
management of heterogeneous workloads that encapsulate data, applications and
operating systems residing on a physical or virtual host. These solutions
improve the speed and quality of server consolidation, data center relocation
and disaster recovery. Novell and PlateSpin will deliver unparalleled support
for mixed infrastructure environments offering products for complete workload
lifecycle management and optimization for Linux*, UNIX*, and Windows* operating
systems in the physical and virtual data center. The combined solutions will
deliver superior value by helping customers reduce costs, improve service levels
and respond to fluctuating business requirements.
"Flexible, automated
management tools that fully leverage server resources and allow the movement of
workloads are necessary for optimizing the data center," said Stephen Elliot,
research director, Enterprise Systems Management Software and ITMS at IDC. "Over
the next three years, heterogeneous virtualization architectures will be the
norm for most IT organizations; as such they must purchase data center
management solutions that offer an ongoing opportunity for lowering operational
costs as well as integrating and managing VMs across both server and storage
infrastructures for greater control and visibility between hardware and the
virtual software tiers."
Optimizing the Data Center
The
acquisition of PlateSpin will allow Novell to offer customers a full solution
stack with a powerful virtualization platform and a best-in-class heterogeneous
management solution. Together, Novell and PlateSpin will solve many of the data
center challenges that customers face today, including:
- Relocation: PlateSpin provides a completely integrated product suite
that automates the assessment and migration phases of data center initiatives,
like server consolidation, data center relocation and hardware upgrades, to help
customers reduce costs, power consumption and space in the data center.
- Protection: PlateSpin's disaster recovery solutions offer affordable
workload protection that leverages virtualization technology to protect both
physical and virtual servers in the data center, for improved security and
business continuity.
- Provisioning: Using PlateSpin's technologies, customers will have a
single approach to imaging and configuring physical and virtual workloads
regardless of platform. This eliminates the manual install process and
dramatically reduces the time to provision new server workloads. It will also
enable customers to address changing resource requirements at peak demand times
as well as in test lab scenarios.
- Optimization and Management:Novell and PlateSpin optimize the balance
between physical and virtual infrastructure by automatically monitoring and
making infrastructure adjustments based on server availability and workload
demand. By automating the process and increasing the visibility into how
workloads use physical and virtual resources over time, customers will be able
to increase server utilization and optimize their data centers by better
addressing common workload movement challenges.
The acquisition of
PlateSpin will enable the heterogeneous data center with support for leading
operating systems and virtual platforms. It will also further enhance Novell's
leadership in open source virtualization by providing tools that easily enable
customers to move physical workloads to Xen*-based virtual machines running on
SUSE® Linux Enterprise as well as other virtual platforms provided by VMware*,
Citrix*, Microsoft* and others.
Ron Hovsepian, president and CEO of
Novell, said, "The PlateSpin acquisition will be a cornerstone of our
two-pronged enterprise Linux and IT management software strategy. With the
addition of the PlateSpin product portfolio, Novell will be uniquely positioned
to deliver the next generation infrastructure software that is at the core of
the data center. Together, we will have the most comprehensive workload
management solution that allows customers to monitor and analyze what to
virtualize, provide the tools to seamlessly virtualize and unvirtualize
workloads, automate the management of workloads, and provide the leading open
source platform from which to run virtualized work."
Stephen Pollack,
founder and CEO of PlateSpin, said, "PlateSpin's ability to manage workloads is
unparalleled and is an essential part of making the data center truly respond to
the needs of the business. Combined with ZENworks® Orchestrator and
virtualization from Novell®, we are very excited about the synergies that this
acquisition will give to customers."
Financial Overview
Novell
will acquire PlateSpin for $205 million using current cash. The acquisition is
expected to close during Novell's second fiscal quarter 2008 subject to the
satisfaction of closing conditions. Novell will provide an update on the
financial impact of the transaction during Novell's first fiscal quarter 2008
earnings call scheduled for Thursday, Feb., 28, at 5 p.m. EST. PlateSpin will be
integrated into Novell's Systems and Resource Management business unit. As part
of this business unit, PlateSpin will continue to develop and market its
solutions to a global customer base. This will be done through the continued
operation of PlateSpin's Toronto facility as well as through a combination of
PlateSpin and Novell offices and facilities around the globe.
Partner
Support
"Citrix has a great relationship with PlateSpin and is excited to
see them become part of Novell's open data center management portfolio. With
this addition, Novell will be able to offer an even richer set of tools to
manage strategic virtual infrastructure systems like Citrix XenServer across a
heterogeneous data center," said Peter Levine, senior vice president and general
manager, Virtualization & Management Division, Citrix Systems. "In a world
where applications are the language of business, our vision is to help customers
become fluent in application delivery. Working closely with cross-platform
management partners like PlateSpin and Novell helps customers realize this
vision faster by ensuring that all Citrix Delivery Center products work well
with each customer's unique environment."
"As IT managers look to
maximize their enterprise resources and have increased flexibility, they need
tools to help them interoperate between Windows and Linux," said Larry Orecklin,
general manager of marketing in the Server & Tools Division at Microsoft.
"The combination of PlateSpin's capabilities in P2V, V2V and analytical tools,
combined with Novell and Microsoft's interoperable virtualization will allow
customers to cross the boundaries of the physical and virtual environments with
confidence."
"Helping customers efficiently deal with server sprawl to
achieve a real-time infrastructure using technologies like open source and
virtualization is key to our business," said Rich Marcello, president, Systems
& Technology at Unisys. "Unisys services and solutions expertise combined
with Novell's technology is a fundamental underpinning to creating a real-time
infrastructure."
Press Conference Call Notification
Novell will
host a press conference call to discuss the acquisition at 11 a.m. EST on
Monday, Feb., 25. Dial-in access for the call is: US/Canada (866) 335-5255;
International (706) 679-2263; password "Novell". A live Webcast of the call will
also be available at www.novell.com/pressconference.
Legal Notice Regarding Forward-Looking Statements
This press
release includes statements that are not historical in nature and that may be
characterized as "forward-looking statements" within the meaning of the Private
Securities Litigation Reform Act, including those related to future financial
and operating results, future opportunities, the benefits and synergies of the
company's brands, strategies and acquisitions, and the growth of the market for
Systems and Resource Management, Identity and Access Management, and Linux
Platform Products. You should be aware that Novell's actual results could differ
materially from those contained in the forward-looking statements, which are
based on current expectations of Novell management and are subject to a number
of risks and uncertainties, including, but not limited to, Novell's completion
of announced acquisitions, Novell's ability to transform its business through
the implementation of its strategic plan, Novell's ability to realize the
benefits anticipated from the Microsoft transaction and other transactions,
Novell's ability to realize the benefits anticipated from its restructuring
plan, and the expected charges to be incurred and payments to be made under the
restructuring plan, Novell's ability to achieve its expense targets, Novell's
success in executing its Linux Platform Products, Identity and Access
Management, and Systems and Resource Management strategies, Novell's ability to
take a competitive position in the Linux Platform Products, Identity and Access
Management, and Systems and Resource Management industries, business conditions
and the general economy, market opportunities, potential new business
strategies, competitive factors, sales and marketing execution, shifts in
technologies or market demand, Novell's ability to integrate acquired operations
and employees, and the other factors described in Novell's Annual Report on Form
10-K filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission on Dec. 21, 2007. Novell
disclaims any intention or obligation to update any forward-looking statements
as a result of developments occurring after the date of this press release
except as required by the securities laws.
About
PlateSpin
Founded in 2003, PlateSpin Ltd. provides a unified suite of
solutions to help enterprises adopt, manage and extend their use of server
virtualization in the data center. PlateSpin's patent-pending conversion and
optimization technology liberates software from hardware platforms, allowing
servers to be streamed over the enterprise network from any source to any
destination. This freedom of movement ensures the best fit between server
resource supply and application workload demands. Global 2000 companies use
PlateSpin solutions to lower costs and solve today's most pressing data center
initiatives such as server consolidation, disaster recovery and hardware
migration. For more information, visit www.platespin.com/novell.
About
Novell
Novell, Inc. (Nasdaq: NOVL) delivers infrastructure software for
the Open Enterprise. Novell is a leader in desktop to data center operating
systems based on Linux and the software required to secure and manage mixed IT
environments. Novell helps customers around the world minimize cost, complexity
and risk, allowing them to focus on innovation and growth. For more information,
visit www.novell.com.
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