Quest Software, Inc. (Nasdaq:QSFT) today announced it has completed the acquisition of Vizioncore Inc., a leading provider of disaster recovery and other products for virtual infrastructure management. Initially acquiring a controlling interest in Vizioncore in 2005, Quest broadened its virtualization product portfolio in 2007 with the acquisitions of Invirtus, a provider of virtual machine optimization, conversion and automation products, and Provision Networks, a leader in virtual client and desktop management solutions. As part of the company’s plan to support increasing customer needs for managing their virtual environment, acquiring the remaining equity of Vizioncore marks the latest step in Quest’s effort to strengthen its position as a leader in software that enables companies to manage and enhance their heterogeneous IT infrastructure.

“We see virtualization as the next great frontier within IT,” said Vinny Smith, Quest CEO, “and the completion of the Vizioncore acquisition along with the recent additions of Provision Networks and Invirtus to the Quest family combine to position us as one of the leading pioneers in this emerging market space. As virtualization grows in importance for organizations, the demand for the kind of management products we’ve delivered for years in the database, application and Windows infrastructure areas will increase. Seeing this as the next logical step in helping customers manage the entire IT stack, we’ll be there once again to meet our customers’ needs.”

Quest also announced that Matt Dircks, recently named General Manager of its virtualization business, will initially focus on the Vizioncore product line as he develops the go-to-market plans for Quest’s growing portfolio of virtualization products. “We have a unique opportunity to meet the diverse needs of customers across many market segments with a portfolio of market-leading products, a highly skilled channel of value-added resellers, and a Quest team with demonstrated excellence in serving enterprise customers on a global scale,” Dircks said. He added that Quest has also added industry visionary Scott Herold to the virtualization business as its Lead Architect. “Scott is a recognized expert in the field of virtualization. I look forward to leveraging his unique blend of practical experience, market knowledge, and visionary thinking across the entire virtualization business.”

“The completion of this acquisition signals another major step in Vizioncore’s evolution and growth in the virtualization market,” said David Bieneman, CEO of Vizioncore. “While maintaining the autonomy that has made us successful, we will also be able to leverage technologies developed by and acquired by Quest, such as Invirtus and Provision Networks, to enhance and expand the feature sets of Vizioncore products. This is very positive news for virtualization customers who will enjoy a richer and robust product set that will help them achieve greater levels of ROI from their investments in virtualization platforms.”

“Vizioncore offers a number of products that target many of the requirements faced by IT decision-makers when deploying virtual machine software," said Dan Kusnetzky, Principal Analyst and President for the Kusnetzky Group, an Acuity Group LLC company. "Vizioncore's products directly address the needs for monitoring virtual system operation, moving virtual systems from one physical machine to another, diagnosing problems as well as backup in a virtual environment. Organizations moving down the path to a more virtualized environment certainly ought to become familiar with Vizioncore."