Quest acquires Provision Networks

Quest is the most hidden company in the virtualization market. It acquired two virtualization startups over last few years, Vizioncore and Invirtus, and operates through them to offer a broad range of solutions, complementary to VMware and Microsoft virtualization platforms.

The company doens’t seem ready to leave the stealth mode yet but is surely working to further extend its presence: virtualization.info has just learned that Quest acquired the popular VDI vendor Provision Networks.

At this point is unknown if Quest will maintain Provision Networks as an independent unit or will merge the offering into the Vizioncore one, like it did for Invirtus (Provision Networks already has an OEM agreement in place with Vizioncore so it’s a very likely scenario).

In any case while other vendors are fighting to control hypervisors, Quest is silently building the widest offering of tools for them, aiming at bigger profits. It probably just misses a virtual lab management framework (Surgient and VMLogix are good candidates for this).

Update: virtualization.info has learned that Provision Networks declined other offers from top IT players, both software and hardware, before closing the agreement with Quest. While names are not disclosed it’s worth to remind that Provision Networks already have partnerships in place with IBM and with HP on hardware side, and with Virtual Iron on software side.

In any case this information implies that major OEMs and virtualization vendors which didn’t make the agreement may be looking for other acquisitions in the space in the near future.

Second update: Quest just released an official announcement confirming the acquisition:

Quest Software, Inc. today announced the acquisition of the assets of Provision Networks Inc., a privately held leader of enterprise-grade presentation and desktop virtualization solutions. The addition of Provision Networks’ award-winning virtual desktop infrastructure (VDI) and management offerings helps position Quest as one of leading providers of heterogeneous virtualization management solutions across both physical and virtual desktops, applications and servers. The companies’ combined products bring to market technical, customer and channel synergies, enabling Quest to extend its leadership in infrastructure management from the desktop to the datacenter.

Effective immediately, Paul Ghostine, co-founder and CEO of Provision Networks, will report directly to Smith and lead this newest addition to Quest…

The virtualization.info Virtualization Industry Radar has been updated accordingly.