Oracle Buys Ksplice

Oracle today announced that it has acquired Ksplice, Inc., the creator of innovative zero downtime update technology for Linux. The transaction has closed.

The addition of Ksplice’s technology will increase the security, reliability and availability of Oracle Linux by enabling customers to apply security updates, diagnostics patches and critical bug fixes without rebooting.

Oracle believes it will be the only enterprise Linux provider that can offer zero downtime updates, and expects to make the Ksplice technology a standard feature of Oracle Linux Premier Support.

Ksplice Inc. is a privately-held company based in Cambridge, Mass.

“More than 7,000 customers have chosen Oracle Linux for mission critical systems because of our world-class support offerings,” said Wim Coekaerts, Senior Vice President, Oracle Linux and Virtualization. “The addition of Ksplice’s zero downtime update technology further extends our Linux technology leadership.”

“System administrators are forced to choose between known best practices and added operational costs when administering Linux updates,” said Jeff Arnold, CEO, Ksplice Inc. “Ksplice’s technology will be able to take Oracle’s kernel updates and transform them into zero downtime updates that provide always-accessible systems with no reboot necessary. This results in improved system availability and security as well as reduced operational costs for the customer.”