Just two weeks ago Oracle announced the acquisition of Virtual Iron, surprising many industry operators that consider the virtualization vendor offering redundant to the Oracle VM and Sun xVM portfolios (Oracle acquired Sun just one month before Virtual Iron).
Oracle didn’t disclose the price paid for Virtual Iron, and Virtual Iron didn’t disclose its earnings in these years, so it’s impossible to say if the database giant decided to buy just to avoid a similar move from a potential competitor and because the deal was cheap, or if the Virtual Iron acquisition was a premium one because Oracle really needed its management stack.
Anyway the Virtual Iron financial situation was unveiled last week by the New York Times, so that any reader may draw his own conclusions:
| 2007 | 2008 | |
| Revenue | $1.5 million | $3.4 million |
| Costs (Sales & Marketing / R&D / Operational) |
$13.6 million | $17.7 million |