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VMware To Acquire Virtual Storage Firm Virsto
Acquisition of Virsto and its virtual storage solutions will help improve the performance of VMware's products.
VMware announced on Monday that it is finalizing a deal to buy Sunnyvale, Calif.-based Virsto Software.
VMware's John Gilmartin said that acquisition of Virsto and its virtual storage solutions will help improve the performance of VMware's products. While VMware currently has a hypervisor to handle server optimization, Virsto will be bringing an added performance boost with its storage product Virsto for vSphere 2.0, a hypervisor for virtual machines that was launched late last year.
"We have two plans for the Virsto product," said Gilmartin in a blog post. "First, we'll continue to offer Virsto's standalone virtual appliance to help accelerate storage performance and improve efficiency in VMware vSphere environments. Second, we're planning to integrate Virsto's architecture and data management services into future VMware products."
While Virsto has been a close partner of VMware since the company's inception, it has also worked closely with Microsoft and Citrix. VMware has not revealed any plans to alter Virsto's close connection to the two rival virtualization companies; however, Gilmartin did say his company will continue to support current Virsto customers.
Speaking on the acquisition, Mark Davis, CEO of Virsto discussed how this move was the natural progression of his company and the choice to join up with VMware was made due to having such similar goals and ideologies.
"As we spent time together in recent months, we discovered a remarkable degree of synergy -- from high level vision down to minute details of implementation architecture," said Davis. "We spent a lot of time finishing each other's sentences in those deep dive diligence meetings."
The news of the acquisition comes on the heels of last month's layoff of 900 VMware employees -- a move that Pat Gelsinger, VMware's chief executive, said was done to ensure VMware had "the right level of resources in the proper places for 2013 and beyond."
Specific details of the acquisition, which is expected to be finalized by the end of the first quarter, were not disclosed.