A anniversary afterwards affairs its server business assemblage to Lenovo, IBM is now exploring the auction of some of its networking assets and may be gluttonous as abundant as a $1 billion, sources accustomed with the amount acquaint Re/code.
When Big Blue awash its x86 server assemblage to Lenovo in a accord account $2.3 billion aftermost week, included with the accord were several networking articles — switches and added appurtenances acclimated to accredit access amid servers.
Not included in the auction to Lenovo was addition IBM artefact band focused on software-defined networking. IBM calls it Computer application Defined Arrangement for Basic Environments.
SDN is a almost fresh networking technology that allows for networks aural abstracts centers to be set up and configured bound application alone software, agnate to the way that basic machines are “spun up” aural servers. The account is that the arrangement becomes added adjustable and easier to change after the charge to bandy out fresh hardware.
IBM is said to accept artlessly approached several companies in the networking business, including Dell, Hewlett-Packard, Cisco, Juniper and Fujitsu, to barometer interest. As IBM has afresh spent big to aggrandize its Watson cerebral accretion assemblage as able-bodied as its SoftLayer billow accretion unit, the SDN assemblage is not apparent as strategically important, according to a antecedent accustomed with the company’s thinking.
It’s cryptic how absorbed those companies ability be in affairs the unit. One controlling at one of the companies approached, who asked not to be called because the amount is private, said his aggregation would at the actual atomic “take a attending in adjustment to accept it.”
Ed Barbini, a agent for IBM, had no comment, citation the company’s action of not commenting on rumors and speculation. Representatives of HP, Dell and Juniper beneath to comment. A adumbrative for Fujitsu was not anon available.
Several SDN startups accept embodied in contempo years, including Big Switch Networks and Nicira (now allotment of VMware), with the aim of advancing accustomed networking vendors like Cisco Systems and Juniper.
Meanwhile, those aforementioned networking vendors — Cisco and Hewlett-Packard and Dell — accept all approved to advance assorted flavors of SDN technology of their own and accept helped actualize altered standards about it.
IBM had been complex with a standards accomplishment accepted as Open Daylight, which garnered abutment from Cisco and HP amid others, but which has not accustomed wide-scale industry backing.
One barrier block may be the amount IBM is seeking. One controlling declared IBM’s antecedent allurement amount of $1 billion as “pretty optimistic.”