12 August 2003 Sun Microsystems is to acquire privately held application provisioning software vendor CenterRun in a cash deal rumoured to be as much as $60 million.
The signing of the takeover deal follows more than a week of press speculation. When complete, CenterRun will be absorbed into Sun’s software division under executive vice president Jonathan Schwartz.
The Redwood City, California-based company’s software will augment Sun’s N1 grid computing technology and will be combined with Sun’s N1 Provisioning Server, which handles infrastructure virtualisation and provisioning in the data centre.
“N1 enables IT departments to manage their data centres more efficiently, by moving from a ‘systems view’ of the data centre, to an applications and services view. By automating the complexity of application provisioning across thousands of servers, CenterRun enhances our N1 vision and strategy,” said Schwartz.
For Sun, the acquisition is particularly significant as CenterRun specialises in migrating customers to Linux from other platforms. The purchase indicates that Sun is more interested in Linux than CEO Scott McNealy will publicly admit.
Although only founded in June 2000, CenterRun can boast a number of major customers, including disk drive maker Seagate and digital certificate provider VeriSign. Its backers include Sequoia Capital, Crosslink Capital and Needham Capital Partners.
