Oracle today announced it has bought network virtualisation specialist Xsigo.
The financial details of the deal were not disclosed,but Oracle said it was keen to bring together its own server virtualisation offerings with the smaller firm's networking capabilities to boost its cloud portfolio.
Xsigo is specifically known for its software-defined networking solutions,with companies such as BT and eBay among its customers.
Although it boasts the compatibility of its solutions as"connecting any server to any network or storage device in seconds",one of Xsigo's featured products is specifically designed for Oracle database.
"Customers are focused on reducing costs and improving utilisation of their network,"said Lloyd Carney,CEO of Xsigo.
"Virtualisation of these resources allows customers to scale compute and storage capacity for their public and private clouds while matching network capacity as demand dictates,"he said.
The deal is expected to close in the autumn of 2012,but until then,the two companies will continue to operate independently.
"The proliferation of virtualised servers in the past few years has made the virtualisation of the supporting network connections essential,"said John Fowler,executive vice-president of systems at Oracle.
"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,"he added.
Last week,VMware also purchased talent in the software-defined networking space,announcing the$1.05bn acquisition of Nicira.
