Juniper Networks is now venturing further into the security of virtualized data centers, as it has acquired another reputable name in the industry, Altor Networks. The deal was sealed off with an estimated $95 million cash purchase.  This move by Juniper Networks is in line with their goal of diversifying their products and services, and delivering integrated and highly scalable security architecture that will protect both physical and virtual systems.

Mark Bauhaus, executive vice president and general manager for Service Layer Technologies at Juniper Networks expressed his exhilaration in this new adventure of the company, saying,  “Juniper is excited to acquire one of the industry’s leading virtualization security vendors and the extremely talented team that built it. This acquisition will extend our leadership in data center and cloud security and will enable customers to deploy a consistent set of security services across their physical and virtual infrastructure, while delivering lowest total cost of ownership.”

Altor Networks has spearheaded a variety of market innovations, and is known as one of the leading provider of virtualized data centers and in the cloud.  They’ve also been a noted partner of Juniper’s for some time, making the acquisition one of interest of both parties.

The impression is that the company is serious about dominating the industry, as Altor is the latest in a string of acquisitions.  Just recently, the tech world was surprised by Juniper Networks’ acquisition of Blackwave to propel and enhance their internet video content delivery.  The acquisition was priced at around $152 million.

Almost the same amount of spending was involved when again, Juniper Networks made another important purchase with Trapeze Networks, which is more directly related to today’s acquisition, as Juniper builds out its security offerings in this manner.  Here we discuss how the organization invested in getting Trapeze Networks for their WLAN systems and management software. Trapeze is a provider of  high levels of WLAN reliability, performance and security in the market.

“Virtualization is the battleground for next-generation networking and security is one of the biggest challenges,” notes Stu Miniman, analyst at Wikibon.org.  “Altor has well respected technology including Altor VF (Virtual Firewall).  Juniper was already a partial owner of Altor and has been working to integrate the software into its router.  The Altor acquisition is validation of the maturation of virtualization into mission critical environments which require secure solutions such as what Juniper/Altor can provide.”

John Furrier talks with Mark Bauhaus

See more on Juniper’s joint survey with Altor here, going over findings from VMworld 2010.