"This is an exciting opportunity for Datalink to expand the value we deliver to our customers," said Paul Lidsky, president and CEO of Datalink. "Companies continue to move aggressively to consolidate their server, storage and networking infrastructures. Virtualization technology is accelerating this trend, and it delivers tremendous efficiency and productivity gains for customers."

With the convergence of storage and networking, this new team's capabilities will add to Datalink's expertise in designing, implementing and managing sophisticated storage, backup and recovery infrastructures. Historically, Fiber Channel and Ethernet were distinct infrastructures provided by separate networking vendors. Going forward, Ethernet will play a central role in consolidated data center networks. By acquiring the Cross networking solutions team, Datalink is able to help customers build the consolidated networks they need to support growing their virtual data center infrastructures.

The team has extensive experience designing, deploying and supporting reliable, cost-effective and secure LAN, WAN and data center infrastructure and security solutions for customers ranging from Fortune 100 companies to small businesses. As a result of this acquisition, Datalink is now a Cisco Silver Certified Partner.

Strengthening Datalink's Virtualization Practice

In September, Datalink unveiled two new services to help companies more effectively design IT infrastructures for virtual environments: the Virtual Infrastructure Audit and the Virtual Infrastructure Assessment. These services provide an end-to-end view of existing servers, applications and storage devices. Cross-domain visibility and related analytics help customers identify current and potential performance issues, as well as make informed design choices based on Datalink recommendations.

"By combining data networking capabilities with our existing SAN and virtualization expertise, we are able to offer customers a single source for all of their data center virtualization needs. This is significant as virtualization technologies have grown to become an essential component for driving efficiency in a company's IT operation," said Lidsky.

Datalink will immediately assume responsibility for supporting the Cross networking customers.