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13 February 2008, 07:46

Sun buys VirtualBox creator Innotek

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Sun Microsystems is to acquire the German company Innotek GmBH, creator of the VirtualBox open source virtualisation software. Sun views VirtualBox as an extension of its Xen-based Sun xVM software. Introduced in November, xVM is offered as a bare metal hypervisor for servers; VirtualBox gives Sun a a desktop product that resembles VMware workstation. The acquisition comes less than a month after Sun purchased open source database company MySQL.

Once it takes over Innotek, Sun wants to continue to develop VirtualBox as an open source product and also offer it in future for different platforms. Just days ago, Innotek released the third beta version for Mac OS X – yesterday it released a beta for OpenSolaris. Versions for Windows and Linux are also available. On guest systems VirtualBox supports various Windows versions – from 98 to Vista, numerous Linux distributions, Free- and OpenBSD, Solaris, DOS and OS/2. The VirtualBox brand will be maintained.

Sun wants to keep Innotek's 22 employees as well as the Innotek development labs in Stuttgart and Dresden. The financial terms of the takeover have not been released.

(ehe)

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