Dell buy to boost virtualisation muscle

Dell is to buy Scalent, a provider of server-virtualization management software. Terms of the deal were not disclosed.

The PC vendor plans to roll Scalent's infrastructure management software into its own Advanced Infrastructure Manager (AIM) datacentre software package.

Scalent's Infrastructure Manager software package provides the ability to manage both physical and virtual servers without making any physical changes to the network. It could work with both VMware and Microsoft Hyper-V hypervisors. The company pitched its software for managing rapid and dynamic deployments of servers, and also as a disaster recovery tool.

Like Scalent's software, Dell's AIM allows an administrator to allocate compute, storage and virtual application workloads from a single console.

In September 2009, Scalent signed an original equipment manufacturer (OEM) agreement with Dell, for Dell to offer Scalent's Infrastructure Manager software under its own name.

Scalent was founded in 2003. In addition to selling its software through Dell, it has served as an OEM provider to EMC and Unisys.

Dell expects to complete the purchase of Scalent, a privately held company, by the end of this month. The financial terms of the deal weren't disclosed.