Sun Buys Innotek

Sun Microsystems announced today that they are buying Innotek. You can read the announcement here. In case you don't immediately recognize the name Innotek, they are the makers of the VirtualBox virtualization software that many of us have come to know and love. It's a great alternative to VMWare and they have an Open Source edition as well.

Sun appears to be on a roll after they announced a few weeks ago that they would be buying MySQL for a cool Billion. The two things that MySQL and Innotek have in common is that they have already implemented both closed and open source editions of their software. This is a trend that is mirrored in Sun's own strategy of releasing code to the Open Source community well offering service and support for customers who wish to purchase it.

The acquisition of Innotek will further enhance Sun's virtualization strategy as well which has seen the recent release of xVM: virtualization software for Solaris that is based on Xen.

"VirtualBox provides Sun with the perfect complement to our recently announced Sun xVM Server product," said Rich Green, executive vice president, Sun Software. "Where Sun xVM Server is designed to enable dynamic IT at the heart of the datacenter, VirtualBox is ideal for any laptop or desktop environment and will align perfectly with Sun's other developer focused assets such as GlassFish, OpenSolaris, OpenJDK and soon MySQL as well as a wide range of community open source projects, enabling developers to quickly develop, test and deploy the next generation of applications."

Ironically, I taped a VirtualBox tutorial recently for the next episode of the_source. Perhaps I can get some comments from Sun or Innotek as well. I will do my best!