Qumranet joins Red Hat
ConvergenceAsia staff
08/09/2008

Leading provider of open source solutions Red Hat has announced the acquisition of virtualisation specialist Qumranet. The acquisition includes Qumranet's virtualisation solutions, including its KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) platform and SolidICE offering, a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI), which together present a comprehensive virtualisation platform for enterprise customers.

In addition, Qumranet's team of professionals that develop, test and support Qumranet solutions, and its leaders of the open source community KVM project, will join Red Hat.

This acquisition advances Red Hat's efforts to transform the virtualisation market and drive comprehensive virtualisation technology and management solutions into every system, from servers to desktops, on both Linux and Windows. Red Hat can now deliver a comprehensive solution integrated with the operating system, which can drive down IT costs while simultaneously enhancing the flexibility and responsiveness of IT infrastructure.

Jim Whitehurst, President and CEO at Red Hat said this acquisition widens the gap between open source and proprietary infrastructure software. “Put simply, Qumranet's KVM and VDI technologies are at the forefront of the next generation of virtualisation. They represent an opportunity to raise the bar and meet the market's demand for virtualisation solutions.”

The Qumranet acquisition also extends Red Hat's virtualisation solutions for managing Windows desktops. SolidICE is a high-performance, scalable desktop virtualisation solution built specifically for virtual desktops, not simply a retrofit from server virtualisation solutions.

“With this acquisition, Red Hat has clearly positioned itself as a competitor within the Virtual Desktop market," said Michael Rose, Research Analyst at IDC. "KVM not only represents a competent platform for hosting virtual desktops and other workloads, but protocols such as SPICE will increase the performance that users can expect to experience from their server-based computing environments, making the platform viable for a larger set of users.”

Under the terms of the transaction, Red Hat paid approximately US$107 million in cash for Qumranet, a privately held company. The acquisition is not expected to contribute materially to revenue in the fiscal year ending February 28, 2009, but should add up to US$20 million in revenue in the following year.

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