IBM today announced a definitive agreement to acquire CSL International, a leading provider of virtualization management technology for IBM’s zEnterprise system. CSL International is a privately held company headquartered in Herzliya Pituach, Israel. Financial terms will not be disclosed.
A strategic investment in the System z portfolio, the acquisition deepens the consolidation and cloud capabilities by offering simplified management of the virtualization environment. CSL International’s CSL-WAVE software enables companies to monitor and manage their z/VM and Linux on System z environments using a powerful and easy-to-use interface. The software provides drag and drop simplicity to instantly create, discover, visualize and connect virtual servers to resources allowing clients to free up more skilled staff to address other business challenges.
The zEnterprise System enables clients to host the workloads of thousands of commodity servers on a single system for simplification, improved security and cost reduction. The combination of IBM and CSL International technologies will allow clients to manage all aspects of z/VM and Linux on System z virtualization, including CPU, memory, storage, and network resources.
“As clients create smarter computing environments, they are looking for ways to manage IT costs and complexity without sacrificing security or the ability to scale,” said Greg Lotko, IBM business line executive, System z. “The response by clients to the advantages of Linux on System z have been tremendous, with the shipped capacity nearly doubling in 1Q13 year to year. With the acquisition of CSL International, IBM expands its cloud virtualization capabilities, making it even easier for clients to take advantage of Linux on System z.”
Virtualization, a foundation of cloud computing, has been designed into the fabric of the System z architecture since its inception nearly 50 years ago. IBM offers expansive scalability with a shared-everything design point for maximum utilization – up to 100 percent – of computing resources. This announcement further extends the value of IBM’s cloud offerings.
The acquisition is expected to close in the third quarter of 2013, subject to the satisfaction of customary closing conditions and applicable regulatory reviews.
