Oracle acquires Xsigo to address networking and cloud gaps

Coming quickly on the heels of VMware’s announced purchase plans of Nicira, Oracle a week later brought news of its own: The company is buying network I/O virtualization vendor Xsigo Systems for an undisclosed sum, though the price tag should be far less than VMware’s handsome offer of $1.26 billion made for Nicira.

Prior to this announcement, networking was considered to be a major technology gap in the Oracle/Sun data center product lineup. But this purchase will give Oracle a slight nudge toward a more complete set of virtualization solutions and help to advance its cloud computing offerings. It will also help Oracle to better compete with the likes of Dell, HP, and IBM, although the company still has a ways to go before its networking portfolio is seen as being on the same level as its competitors.

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Ever since VMware threw more than a billion dollars at Nicira, software-defined networking (SDN) has become the new buzzword within the IT community, with some hoping it becomes as popular as “virtualization” or “cloud.” As an example, by adding “SDN” to its announcement, Oracle was able to capitalize on this frenzy and gain even more press coverage for its Xsigo acquisition. But from a technology standpoint, I have to ask if this acquisition is really about SDN.

Both acquisitions are a reflection of how networking is once again becoming important and a hot topic of conversation in the technology world. But at the end of the day, Xsigo and Nicira are not the same. More to the point, there seems to be some confusion as to whether these two companies are addressing the same technology space and if Xsigo is an SDN player in the true sense of the word.

Some industry pundits are promoting Oracle’s SDN claims and positioning Xsigo with other SDN vendors, such as Nicira and Big Switch Networks. But is that true? Yes, Xsigo does create virtual network connections with software, but it doesn’t do so with an OpenFlow-based software controller, which is largely how SDNs have become defined. For what it’s worth, Xsigo doesn’t even appear to be a member of the Open Networking Foundation (ONF), the nonprofit consortium that’s developing and setting standards for the OpenFlow protocol on which SDN is based.

With Nicira, VMware will be able to allow its customers to build and configure entire computer networks using software, similar to the way VMware currently enables the configuration of virtual servers. But Xsigo’s software and hardware solution is currently more about I/O virtualization and reducing the number of network cards, switches, and cables required to operate a network of virtual machines.

“Xsigo is virtualization of storage I/O, which is different than virtualization of networking, which is one aspect of SDN,” explained Kyle Forster, co-founder of Big Switch Networks. “What they are doing is important and increases the utilization of storage and storage performance, and will help increase data efficiency.”

Forster went on to say, “This makes a ton of sense for Oracle, but it doesn’t deliver on the promise of SDN which is to make networks programmable by separating control and forwarding planes. This decoupling accelerates innovation on both hardware and software, and when based on industry standards such as OpenFlow, allows customers to have multivendor environments.”

Forster also told InfoWorld that a significant amount of the SDN ecosystem is currently looking at new ways of introducing network services in a more automated and interactive manner. Big Switch already offers this, along with support for the virtual switches and the physical infrastructure customers have today.

Companies are looking to virtualization and cloud technologies to provide rapid, agile deployment at a much lower cost. But server virtualization also introduced additional complexities with its many connections to external networks and storage resources. The creation and migration of virtual machines also requires on-demand networking and storage resources that can be relocated seamlessly.

Xsigo switches connect to each other and to servers with either InfiniBand or 10Gb Ethernet, although the company says its best performance comes with InfiniBand as the transport vehicle. This is a nice addition because Oracle is a big proponent of InfiniBand connectivity, and the company currently leverages this technology within its Exadata and Exalogic systems.

“The proliferation of virtualized servers in the last few years has made the virtualization of the supporting network connections essential,” said John Fowler, Oracle executive vice president of systems. “With Xsigo, customers can reduce the complexity and simplify management of their clouds by delivering compute, storage and network resources that can be dynamically reallocated on-demand.”

Clouds deploying Xsigo’s products can reduce network infrastructure complexity by more than 70 percent, reduce connectivity costs by more than 50 percent, and lower power consumption by more than 30 percent, according to Oracle.

The combination of its software and hardware provides what Xsigo describes as a “wire-once infrastructure” for virtualized deployments that minimize the need for switches, cards, cables, and related administrative work by as much as 70 percent. Xsigo’s network isolation minimizes reliance on VLANs, further reducing complexity.

In the end, from a technology standpoint, Oracle’s acquisition of Xsigo should prove to be a very solid purchase for the company, helping to fill a networking void, advance the company’s virtualization offering, and provide a good fit with Oracle’s Exadata and other clustered solutions that also use InfiniBand technology. Right now, it doesn’t sound like Xsigo will be Oracle’s answer to SDN, at least not on its own and in its current state.

The acquisition is subject to customary closing conditions and approvals, but the deal is expected to close sometime in the fall of 2012. Until it closes, the two companies will continue to operate independently.

How do you think Oracle will leverage Xsigo? Will it acquire more technologies and morph them to provide a more traditional SDN approach? And what happens to existing Xsigo customers? Will Oracle stay true to its word and allow Xsigo software to continue to work with non-Oracle systems? Or do you see it becoming a proprietary technology?

This article, “Oracle acquires Xsigo to address networking and cloud gaps,” was originally published at InfoWorld.com. Follow the latest developments in virtualization and networking at InfoWorld.com.