Nicira sold for $1.26 billion to VMware

Updated July 23, 2012

On January 10, 2012, I wrote the entry  Network Virtualization (NV), The New El Dorado. I analyzed specifically Nicira and M2Mi (Machine to Machine Intelligence) which were and still are the major players.
According to VMware's Bogomil Balkansky in  Business Insider , 

VMware was already creating similar technology to what Nicira was doing. By buying the company it gave itself a big shortcut to own this new multibillion market. 
How the $1.26 billion valuation was decided, I don't know, Business Insider does not know, most people don't know it.
These nice boxes have a value of $1.26 billion

But it proves once again the magic of  Andreeseen Horowitz

My analysis at the time concluded M2Mi  network visualization is a clear working product. I presented more details about M2Mi technology in Why Include the Network Virtualization to the Cloud 


According to M2Mi web site, the company has a stellar list of partners: IBM, Oracle, Cisco, Intel, Ericsson and Joyent 

Does it mean M2Mi can reach the one billion plus valuation too?

Time will tell. IMHO, they have a solid product working, while VMware must polish Nicira to offer the Network Virtualization solution they need as part of their suite of products. Quoting Ben Horowitz
VMware/Nicira are going after the $37 billion data networking market, particularly new data centers being built with cloud computing, says Horowitz. With OpenFlow, they have a good chance to grab a lot of it.
 With this huge $37 billion per year market size, there is plenty of room for other key players. "Cisco has been put on notice, but has also been given a big opportunity to create great new hardware" says  Bogomil Balkansky.  Ben Horowitz adds "technologically, from a programming standpoint, there are more distributing computing guys than networking guys, so it very much fits with VMware, more so than with Cisco.

Miha


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