EMC Takes Aim at Network Management

EMC continues to move outside its core storage business with another acquisition aimed at broader IT management.

EMC today announced that it has acquired privately held Voyence, a provider of network device configuration and change management solutions that automate change, compliance and activation processes.

The storage giant is one of a host of vendors working to combine storage automation with broader IT automation, and Voyence will fit in with its Smarts and ControlCenter offerings (see Storage and Data Center Automation Begin to Converge).

“As we continue to build on the success of our Smarts model-based management technology, as well as the technology leadership of EMC ControlCenter, we are well positioned to take advantage of Voyence’s cutting-edge capabilities,” stated Chris Gahagan, EMC’s senior vice president for Resource Management Software.

VoyenceControl, Voyence’s flagship product, is a network configuration and change management solution based that can manage thousands of devices across multi-vendor network infrastructures. Integration with EMC Smarts will let customers integrate network configuration change events detected by VoyenceControl into Smarts to resolve issues caused by misconfigurations, and Smarts users can directly access VoyenceControl’s configuration database and launch remediation procedures from the Smarts interface.

VoyenceControl’s ITIL-compatible software also analyzes network device security compliance and makes sure that every device is configured with the most recent security recommendations and software patches, reducing update time.

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Baird analyst Daniel Renouard wrote that EMC “likely had to pay up to $100 million to acquire the company. HP, IBM and Cisco were also partnered with Voyence and may have been interested in acquiring the company given the current level of interest around data center management tools.”

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