NVIDIA closes Mellanox buy, agrees to acquire Cumulus Networks

NVIDIA closed its previously announced acquisition of Mellanox April 27 (see "NVIDIA to buy Mellanox"), but hasn’t let any grass grow under its feet when it comes to further M&A. The company May 4 announced that it has agreed to purchase open network software company Cumulus Networks for an undisclosed sum. NVIDIA also did not state when it expects the deal to close.

Based in Mountain View, CA, Cumulus offers Cumulus Linux, an open operating system for network switches that NVIDIA asserts supports more than 100 hardware platforms. That includes Mellanox Spectrum switches; the two companies announced a partnership at the March 2016 OCP Summit and subsequently shipped combined offerings (see “Mellanox targets Open Composable Networks offering at Open Compute Project environments”). The Cumulus OS supports the Telecom Infra Project’s Voyager packet optical transponder as well (see “Cumulus Networks announces availability of Cumulus Linux for early access on Voyager”). The company also offers Cumulus NetQ, a data analytics tool designed to enable real-time visibility, troubleshooting, and lifecycle management of open data center and campus networks.

In addition to its work with the Telecom Infra Project, Cumulus has participated in the creation of the ONIE environment (which NVIDIA says provides the software foundation for Mellanox’s bare metal switches) and DENT, a network OS for disaggregated network switches that NVIDIA says offers a distributed Linux software framework for retail and other enterprises at the edge of the network.

NVIDIA says the acquisition will enable it to deepen its networking software resources.

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