Ericsson claims gaining full control over NodePrime reduces sourcing risk and secures control of ‘roadmap direction and acceleration’
Ericsson continued its software push, announcing plans to acquire full interest in San Francisco-based NodePrime in a move to accelerate support for software-defined infrastructure. The NodePrime platform currently provides support for Ericsson’s Hyperscale Datacenter System 8000 product.
Financial terms of the all cash deal were not released, but it will see Ericsson pick up 100% control of NodePrime, including 15 employees, which will be integrated into the vendor’s Business Unit Cloud & IP division. NodePrime’s platform is said to be the only infrastructure management platform and is designed to support command and control of the “complete ecosystem of components in today’s existing data centers.”
“This software platform enables discovery, analysis and automated configuration of existing and new data center hardware platforms,” Ericsson explained. “This allows data centers to become hyperscale and adopt distributed infrastructure. By acquiring NodePrime’s competence, Ericsson will reduce sourcing risk and secure control of roadmap direction and acceleration.”
“NodePrime has unique talent and was a clear choice to bring inside Ericsson,” said Anders Lindblad, VP and head of Ericsson’s Business Unit Cloud & IP, in a statement. “We believe in innovation coming from the Silicon Valley area and will continue to increase our presence and distribution of such innovation.”
NodePrime emerged last September with $7 million in seed money from Ericsson, Menlo Ventures, NEA, Formation 8, Initialized Capital, Crosslink Capital and TEEC Angel Fund. The move included the unveiling of its platform that was said to be used by SAP, Ericsson and GoDaddy.
“Our vision is to transform the data center into a single organism where it’s entirely possible to manage millions of machines and devices, and billions of metrics inside one view,” said James Malachowski, co-founder and CEO of NodePrime, at that time. “Our platform is a fundamental enabler of the software-defined data center that brings new levels of virtualization and containerization to modern IT infrastructure. Just as VMware and Docker have had huge operational impacts on business, we’re creating a power shift for enterprises to make decisions on their own terms and scale with precision, at the speed which businesses need to operate today.”
Ericsson has been bolstering its software work in the telecom space revolving around software-defined networking, network functions virtualization and cloud platforms. The company late last year announced a partnership with Cisco calling for the companies to combine platforms to target telecom operators and reportedly produce at least $1 billion in incremental revenue opportunities for each company beginning in 2018. When announced, the partnership was said to offer a platform including routing, data center, networking, cloud, mobility, management and control, and tap their respective global footprints to “create the networks of the future.” The companies said the network support is to include “5G,” cloud, IP and the “Internet of Things,” and that Ericsson and Cisco will provide teams to jointly work on an initiative targeting SDN, NFV, and network management and control.
Ericsson last month touted its participation in NTT DoCoMo’s NFV plans, noting its platform based on the Open Platform for NFV network architecture was used for NTT’s commercial service launch. The platform is said to provide interoperability and connectivity with any “carrier class virtualized network function” and SDN solution. Ericsson said it also provided system integration and support services for the deployment.
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