Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions has announced the acquisition of Qumranet, Inc. The acquisition includes Qumranet's virtualization solutions, including its KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine) platform and SolidICE offering, a virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI).

This acquisition will advance Red Hat’s efforts to transform the virtualization market and drive comprehensive virtualization technology and management solutions into every system, from servers to desktops, on both Linux and Windows. It will enable Red Hat to offer a comprehensive solution integrated with the operating system, which can drive down IT costs while simultaneously enhancing the flexibility and responsiveness of IT infrastructure.

Red Hat’s solution components include:
1. The industry's leading open source operating system, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, with built-in virtualization
2. An embedded hypervisor which supports all major operating systems
3. A consistent management platform for both virtual and physical systems, uniting servers, desktops, storage and networks
4. A defining cloud and grid management solution
5. Advanced, high-speed inter-application messaging
6. High availability clustering solutions
7. Integrated security infrastructure

These solutions will leverage the power of the open source innovation model, which permits the delivery of new capabilities faster, more reliably and with greater security and stability.

The Qumranet acquisition also extends Red Hat's virtualization solutions for managing Windows desktops.

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

Renu Singh/ITVoir Network