Security among top virtualization trends

A couple of weeks ago, I blogged about security being a major issue in the cloud market, and the closely related virtualization market.

Juniper testified that security was a significant virtualization trend by acquiring expansion stage software company Altor Networks for $95 million cash earlier this week (full story here).

Altor provides a security suite tailored to virtualized data centers and cloud computing environments, including firewall, intrusion prevention, compliance solutions, monitoring, and so forth. They compete with other expansion stage software companies like Reflex Systems, and are joined in the ecosystem by Catbird, Hytrust, and others.

Juniper was already an investor in Altor, with participation in its Series B venture capital investment earlier this year. Other venture capital investment funds included Accel, DAG, and Foundation Capital.