IBM Acquires Meiosys In Utility Computing Play

IBM Thursday said it has acquired Meiosys, a developer of software that allows applications to be moved dynamically from one server to another without disruption.

Financial terms were not disclosed.

Meiosys, with offices in Palo Alto, Calif. and Toulouse, France, develops MetaCluster. The middleware software sits between an application and the operating system to decouple the application from the hardware, according to Meiosys officials. This allows the applications to be dynamically moved from server to server, with no modifications to those applications needed.

There are three products in the MetaCluster line. MetaCluster HPC optimizes and protects high-performance computing application, MetaCluster UC provides on-demand application relocation for utility computing purposes, and MetaCluster FT gives fault-tolerance to applications, Meiosys officials said.

IBM plans to integrate Meiosys' applications into its products, with potential products slated to be released during the second half of the year. IBM officials said the Meiosys technology already integrates with IBM Tivoli Provisioning Manager software.Meiosys currently has technology and/or joint marketing relationships with several other vendors. For example, Hewlett-Packard resells its MetaCluster HPC application, while Meiosys and Sun Microsystems have a joint marketing program for MetaCluster. Fujitsu, NEC, and SGI also have relationships with Meiosys.