Univa and United Devices, two of the biggest players in the grid
computing space, are merging.
Univa CEO Jason Liu will head the combined company, which will be called
Univa UD, while UD CEO Ben Rouse will stay on as a consultant.
Univa CTO Steve Tuecke will be CTO of the combined company, and UD CTO Jikku
Venkat will head the company's data center business.
United Devices is one of the oldest companies in the grid computing space
and made a name for itself through public grid computing projects, but in
recent years has moved
into the data center virtualization market.
Univa was formed
by the founders of the open source Globus Toolkit, the de facto grid
computing standard. In recent months the company has combined
other open source offerings into a broader grid and cluster offering. The
company's goal was "to become the Red Hat" of the grid and cluster space,
Liu said.
That product will be the base offering of the combined company, which will
announce a formal product roadmap on Oct. 15.
“Univa UD will be an open source software company that provides value-added
technology on top of the basic open source download offering, much like the
business models of other successful open source companies like SugarCRM and
XenSource,” said Ian Foster, co-founder of both Univa and Globus.
Liu said the two companies had little overlap, and "95 to 98 percent" of
employees will be staying on.
"We have very similar approaches and very complementary products," Liu said.
"It's a marriage made in heaven."
Liu said both companies have briefed customers on the merger and the
response has been positive. "We've had very strong response from customers
on both sides," he said. "The timing is perfect for this."
In other grid news, the Open Grid Forum has announced that Craig Lee of The
Aerospace Corporation will succeed HP's Mark Linesch as OGF president.
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