Virtualization software company VMware today announced that it will buy B-hive Networks of San Mateo, CA.
VMware, a Palo Alto, CA-based subsidiary of Hopkinton, MA, storage giant EMC, makes software for both desktop machines and servers that can make a single computer appear as a number of different virtual machines. These can be run simultaneously, and even have different operating systems. In this way, you can, for instance, run some applications in Windows and some in Apple’s Mac OS X on the same piece of hardware.
Data centers use VMware’s technology to assign different virtual servers to different users and different tasks. This form of virtualization helps companies save money on computer servers—if , that is, they can manage the complexity of having all these virtual servers as an extra layer on top of a network of real, physical hardware.
B-hive, which is based in California but has R&D labs in Israel, has developed programs that help monitor and control this virtual infrastructure. If a virtualized application starts to run very slowly, for example, b-hive’s software can automatically allocate more resources such as an extra virtual machine to help handle the task.
VMware made a similar acquisition in January when it bought desktop virtualization company Thinstall. The San Francisco company makes a system that lets users in large organizations run Windows programs on their computer, without having to install them locally.
