Microsoft Corp.
today said it is acquiring advanced clustering software provider Valence Research, Inc., of Beaverton, Ore.
Financial terms were not disclosed.
Valence develops of TCP/IP load-balancing and fault tolerance software for
the Microsoft Windows NT operating system, and Microsoft said the purchase
is key to its clustering technology and Internet capabilities.
With the acqusition, Microsoft said it is renaming the technology, calling
it the Microsoft Windows NT Load Balancing Service. The service is designed
to provide improved scalability and fault tolerance to a host of Windows
NT-based products, such as outbound SMTP mail service in Microsoft Exchange
Server and Microsoft Proxy Server. The technology will also be deployed in
integrated system services, including Microsoft Internet Information
Service, Point-to-Point Tunneling Protocol Service and Microsoft Internet
Authentication Service.
Microsoft said it already uses the service in its online infrastructure, in
sites such as microsoft.com and MSN.com. In addition, the company said the
Windows NT Load Balancing Service is compatible with Internet Protocol
Security (IPSec), the Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) standard for
end-to-end security at the network layer.
“We are excited to extend our clustering capabilities with this acquisition
so that many more Microsoft customers can benefit from this technology,”
said Jim Allchin, senior vice president of the personal and business
systems group at Microsoft.
“Microsoft is also pleased to add key personnel from Valence Research to
the Microsoft Windows NT Server team.”
Microsoft Windows NT Load Balancing Service will become a standard component of Windows NT Server Enterprise Edition. Pricing and ordering information will be announced later in the year, and customers can learn more about the service at Microsoft’s site.
