Reports: Oracle shuts down Virtual Iron

Slightly more than a month after purchasing Virtual Iron, Oracle has decided to shutter the operations of the fast-growing virtualization software company. In a letter to Virtual Iron's more than 1,500 sales partners, Oracle says it "will suspend development of existing Virtual Iron products and will suspend delivery of orders to new customers."

At the same time, it will also not allow partners to sell new licenses beyond the end of this month. Indeed, restrictive conditions are already in effect--and partners can only sell to existing customers within this month only under certain conditions. At the moment, Oracle is telling its partners that Virtual Iron Extended Enterprise Edition version 4.4 will be supported through September 3, and version 4.5 through January 14, 2010.

This swift move makes it appear that it is probably Oracle's strategy all along to simply acquire Virtual Iron's technology and keep it out of the hands of competitors. I know of at least one organization that has bought into Virtual Iron technology in lieu of VMware; good luck to them now that Virtual Iron will be no more.

So far, though, the Oracle and Virtual Iron websites do not mention the discontinuing sales.

For more on this story:
- check out this article at CNET News
- check out this article at Channel Insider

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