Dell Buys Maker of Virtualization Management Software

Dell on Thursday said it has reached an agreement to purchase Scalent, a privately-held maker of data center virtualization technology.

No price was disclosed.

The deal represents an attempt by the company to make good on founder Michael Dell's commitment last year to remove $200 billion of inefficiency from $1.2 trillion IT infrastructure industry spending.

Brad Anderson, SVP of Dell's enterprise product group, characterized the acquisition as a critical step in the development of his company's Virtual Integrated System (VIS), a set of server, networking, storage and software products designed to streamline data center operations.

"We know that Scalent software, in combination with Dell servers, storage and network platforms, provide increased efficiency and value for our customers," he said in a statement. "Scalent’s open architecture is an example of Dell’s ongoing commitment to provide customers with solutions that don’t lock them into proprietary hardware or gateways."

Dell plans to integrate Scalent's technology into its Advanced Infrastructure Manager (AIM) offering.

AIM is component of VIS that allows IT administrators to manage networks, storage, and servers from a single interface.

Scalent's Infrastructure Management software is designed to make data center server provisioning and utilization faster and more efficient for both physical and virtual servers.

The company claims its customers have been able to reduce spare server counts by as much as 80%.

The deal consummates a relationship that flowered last September when Dell announced plans to distribute a version of Scalent's open infrastructure management product V/OE under its own brand.