July 2012: VMware has announced the intention to buy cloud infrastructure player Nicira Inc for US$1.26bn in cash and equity
Nicira Technology Focus:-
IT architecture player Nicira Inc is a pioneer in the area of software-defined networking, as well as network virtualisation for open-source initiatives.
This acquisition would deliver a major windfall for Andreessen Horowitz, a Silicon Valley venture capital company.
Nicira technology provides software defined data centre capability, which enables cloud infrastructure clients to improve business efficiency, with rapid deployment and rapid (re-)configuration of their services. At the core of this approach, software running on server computers simulates programmable routers and switches.
Nicira and VMware believe that this is a major future direction in cloud infrastructure provision.
This acquisition would expand VMware’s networking portfolio, and would add data centre virtualisation to VMWare’s product suite for server virtualisation.
In an interview following the announcement, Paul Maritz, chief executive officer, VMware, said,
“The acquisition of Nicira adds to our portfolio of networking assets and positions VMware to be the industry leader in software-defined networking.”
Server virtualization created by VMware helped to make ‘cloud computing’ a major direction for enterprise computing server provision,
VMware obviously believes that Nicira’s “network virtualization” technology developments will enable the next direction for enterprise networked server provision, incorporating “virturalized networking”.
It will be very interesting to watch if network virtualization proves to be a big threat to the existing networking equipment providers, like Cisco, in the same way that server virtualization threatened established hardware server providers,