Voltaire signs $17M deal with IBM

Voltaire has licensed certain unnamed software to IBM in a deal that also includes a joint development agreement and which could bring at least $17 million in fees to the networking company. Chelmsford-based Voltaire provides network connection fabrics for data centers, high performance computing and cloud environments. The deal with IBM also could see Voltaire receive ongoing support fees based on sales volume of the products resulting from the development deal.

No details were released about what those products might be, however at the end of November, Voltaire announced to be acquired by IBM partner Mellanox Technologies of California for approximately $218 million. IBM’s Intelligent cluster high performance computing (HPC) offering uses the Mellanox ConnectX-2 20 and 40 Gb/s InfiniBand adapter and IS5000 switch. Voltaire is one of the leaders in InfiniBand fabric products for HPC centers and has recently made a strong push into 10 Gb/s Ethernet switches as well.

Founded in 1997, Voltaire reported approximately 200 employees as of September 2010. In July, Voltaire reported revenue growth of $16.58 million for the second quarter of 2010, versus $10.75 million in Q2 2009. Voltaire CEO Ronnie Kenneth called out the company’s investment in InfiniBand and now Ethernet as a main driver for the growth.