It’s been over a month since Oracle aquired Virtual Iron for an “undisclosed sum”. It seems that this aquisition may have helped forward Oracle’s business plans in the world of virtualization, this has not stopped them from effectivly snuffing out the companies main product.
In a recent letter to Virtual Iron’s sales partners, Oracle says it “will suspend development of existing Virtual Iron products and will suspend delivery of orders to new customers.” A second letter to a partner says it will not allow partners to sell new licenses to anyone – including existing customers – after the end of June. Before then, partners can only sell licenses to existing customers under certain conditions.
“Until June 30, 2009, Oracle may approve granting add-on licenses to existing Virtual Iron end customers, or licensing end customers who had demo’d or otherwise evaluated the former Virtual Iron products and do not require further delivery,” the second letter reads.
Oracle intends to meld Virtual Iron’s product with its own Oracle VM. Both are based on the open-source Xen hypervisor. “Oracle has completed a thorough review of the Virtual Iron product portfolio, and intends to fully integrate Virtual Iron technology with Oracle VM, Oracle’s server virtualization and management product,” Oracle’s letter to partners reads.
A former Virtual Iron employee is quoted as saying that Oracle has no interest in courting Virtual Iron’s partners or customers. He says that Oracle only negotiated with Virtual Iron through Oracle’s CTO office. “Marketing and sales were never involved,” he explains, “which led me to believe they were only interested in the technology itself.”
