Sun Microsystems announced yesterday, that they have entered into a stock purchase agreement to acquire innotek, the company behind the open source virtualization software called VirtualBox. The agreement to acquire innotek follows Sun's announcement on January 16 of a definitive agreement to acquire MySQL, the world's most popular open source database.
Sun Microsystems announced yesterday, that they have entered into a stock purchase agreement to acquire innotek, the company behind the open source virtualization software called VirtualBox. (Photo: Sun Microsystems)
With over four million downloads since January 2007, innotek’s open source VirtualBox product has been quickly established as one of the leading developer desktop virtualization platforms. VirtualBox gives desktop or laptop PCs running the Windows, Linux, Mac or Solaris operating systems the ability to run multiple, operating systems side-by-side. One solid use is for software developers who use it to build multi-tier or cross-platform applications. Power-users can take advantage of applications that may not be available for their base operating system of choice, for example running Windows XP and Ubuntu side-by-side.
VirtualBox is open source, and can be freely downloaded at virtualbox.org or openxvm.org. The download is less than 20 megabytes and is easily installed on any modern, x86-architecture laptop or desktop system running Windows, Linux, Mac or Solaris. Supported guest operating systems include all versions of Windows from 3.1 to Vista, Linux 2.2, 2.4 and 2.6 kernels, Solaris x86, OS/2, Netware and DOS.
"VirtualBox provides Sun with the perfect complement to our recently announced Sun xVM Server product," said Rich Green, executive vice president, Sun Software. “Where Sun xVM Server is designed to enable dynamic IT at the heart of the datacenter, VirtualBox is ideal for any laptop or desktop environment.”
The addition of VirtualBox will also fit in with Sun’s other developer focused acquisitions and assets the company said, such as GlassFish, OpenSolaris, OpenJDK and soon MySQL, as well as a wide range of community open source projects.
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