Quest Software of Aliso Viejo, Calif., plans to acquire virtualization vendor Surgient for an undisclosed amount by the end of the third quarter.

The Austin, Texas, firm produces the Surgient Automation Platform. With the acquisition, Quest will be able to move deeper into the self-provisioning and virtualized server management market where it plans to become an on-premises, private cloud software supplier, Quest spokesmen said. "Since 2003, Surgient has developed an impressive array of patented technologies and products. When the acquisition is complete, our customers will have the platform they need to not only quickly implement private cloud infrastructures, but also support them effectively," said Doug Garn, CEO and president of Quest Software, in the announcement.

Quest already is a player in the database management and applications management fields. In May 2009, Surgient launched a virtual machine self provisioning product to complement its virtual lab manager for software test and development. The self-provisioning feature was designed to work with Microsoft's System Center Virtual Machine Manager and Hyper-V hypervisor, frequently used by developers. Quest Software already has a virtualization product line in the field through its Vizioncore unit, maker of vOptimizer Pro and vFoglight management tools. VRangerPro is a leading backup and recovery product in VMware environments. Quest says it is now one of the largest virtualization management software vendors with 20,000 customers. On July 29, Quest reported revenues for the second quarter ended June 30 of $186.1 million, a 13.3% increase compared to $164.3 million the year before. New license revenues grew 25.1% to $77.1 million. Operating margins increased to 17.7% compared to 15.9% in the preceding quarter. Surgient customers include Merck, Raymond James, Hewlett-Packard, EMC, CA, Iron Mountain, IBM, GE, Intuit, Microsoft, and SAP.