Rumor: VMware to buy Opsware after IPO

SYS-CON is reporting a brief news claiming VMware is in talk to buy US vendor Opsware, once collected money from its Initial Public Offering, expected for this June.

While it’s expected VMware will proceed with more acquisition after IPO, at today there are no signs this may involve a target like Opsware, which provides datacenter automation capabilities and may extend VMware domain way further virtualization.

Despite that, such acquisition may make sense, considering virtualization is first step (and datacenter automation is the second) toward general purpose grid computing, a market where VMware may want to move once hardware virtualization becomes a free commodity.

Such scenario is backed by kind of acquisitions VMware made so far: Akimbi (in 2006), which provides automation in virtual lab management, and Propero (2007), which provides automation in virtual desktop provisioning.