In March 2009 virtualization.info published an article titled Quest uses Surgient, why not acquire it? suggesting that such acquisition would fit the Quest expansion plans and would be the natural evolution of a pre-existing relationship between the two.
Quest answered today to that question by announcing in fact the acquisition of Surgient for an undisclosed sum.
Surgient is one of the very first startups that populated the (almost empty) virtualization ecosystem in 2003.
The company initially launched a hosted virtual lab automation (VLA) solution. In 2008 it changed its business model, allowing customers to install the product on premises and reshaping its strategy to market the platform as a VM lifecycle solution rather than a VLA solution.
In 2010 Surgient changed again: it dropped the concept of VM Lifecycle Automation entirely and fully embraced the private cloud automation hype.
Quest will include Virtual Automation Platform (VAP) in the Vizioncore portfolio. There, the Surgient technology will be probably merged with another orchestration product that Quest owns: vControl, launched in September 2009.
Both Surgient and Vizioncore brands will disappear in one month from now, as Quest already announced the plan to rename the latter as Quest Software Server Virtualization Management Group starting September 1st.
The acquisition is expected to be closed within the Q3 2010.
The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar has been updated accordingly.