Fulcrum makes silicon for data-center switches with 10-Gigabit and 40-Gigabit Ethernet ports. Its chips are known for low latency. The small, privately held company's technology will give Intel a place inside the switches atop server racks that link servers to each other and to the overall network. Intel wants to pair Fulcrum's chips with its own silicon used in Ethernet adapters and controllers so they can exchange new types of information about security, quality of service, management and other variables.

Intel did not disclose the price it paid for Fulcrum, which is based in Calabasas, California, and was founded in 1999. Its plan is to have most of Fulcrum's employees transfer to Intel and work in the company's data center group.

System vendors are already lining up their own computing, networking and storage platforms to help automate the operation of virtualized data centers. Cisco Systems has paired its Unified Computing System (UCS) servers with its data-center switches, along with EMC storage and VMware's virtualization software. Hewlett-Packard also sees itself offering data-center integration, and Juniper Networks and IBM seem to be heading down the same path through a partnership.

"Our customers are looking to purchase compute, networking and storage as one unit," said Steve Schultz, director of marketing at Intel. "This is a building block we didn't have in our product portfolio."

The key to these types of initiatives is to make servers and network components aware of each other so they can work more closely together, said Yankee Group analyst Zeus Kerravala. As applications on dedicated servers give way to virtual machines that can be moved around for greater efficiency, it's harder for IT administrators to keep network policies up to date manually, he said. Such an effort is both time-consuming and prone to human errors, which are the leading cause of network downtime, according to Kerravala.