IBM’s latest acquisition has come in the form of networking and virtualization switch vendor BLADE Network Technologies. The acquisition of BLADE will bring top-of-rack switches, management software and network virtualization technology to Big Blue, as the company continues to build out its portfolio of products for cloud computing and virtual data center environments, sister site InfoStor reports.
“BLADE provides blade server and top-of-rack switches as well as software to virtualize and manage cloud computing and other workloads. It boasts a customer roster that includes more than half of the Fortune 500 and, along with IBM, counts HP, NEC and SGI among its OEM partners.
“IBM and BLADE have worked together since 2002 and have thousands of joint clients. More than 50 percent of IBM System x BladeCenters currently attach to or use BLADE products, according to Big Blue.
“In a statement, Brian Truskowski, general manager for IBM System Storage and Networking, said ‘BLADE will help IBM better integrate networks with its systems, optimizing them for workloads that require high-speed and low-latency performance such as cloud computing and business analytics. For example, faster data transport enables faster decisions important for analytics workloads.’ He continued, ‘BLADE will increase IBM’s System Networking development, sales, support, skills and awareness and help IBM build smarter systems that are optimized for client requirements.’
“BLADE provides software that helps address the virtualization requirements of cloud computing environments. BLADE software allows servers to more closely integrate with the network so that clients can deploy thousands of virtual machines (VM) to run large application workloads in the cloud.”
Read the Full “Big Blue to buy BLADE Network Technologies” Story at InfoStor.
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