cancel
Showing results for 
Search instead for 
Did you mean: 

Views from a VMware User Group on recent VMware acquisitions

AlexRestrepo
Level 1
Employee

In 2019, VMware made headlines for its notable acquisitions, including companies such as Avi Networks and Veriflow, improving the functionality of NSX and vRealize, respectively. The acquisition of Pivotal signals a broader strategy expanding beyond traditional server virtualization, accelerating the move to containers by VMware. From a high level, these moves make sense. Platform consolidation is happening across the industry as public cloud providers expand their offerings and move on-premises. VMware is now in a position to offer end-to-end management of the entire IT stack. From running of workloads to network management and even offering infrastructure security—VMware now plays a much more significant role in the data center.

I recently had a chance to attend a session hosted by a VMUG group. The session narrowed the focus on one particular recent VMware acquisition, Carbon Black. For those unfamiliar with Carbon Black, here is how they describe themselves from their website:

“The VMware Carbon Black Cloud is Carbon Black’s endpoint protection platform (EPP) delivering next-generation security and IT operations services through the cloud. It applies big data analytics across all endpoints to make predictions about — and provide protection from — current, future, and unknown attacks.”

Cutting through some of the superlatives and standard industry terms, we see a solution focused on threat detection and protection from various bad actors like ransomware up to and including zero-day attacks. Improving its position in both the endpoint and security sphere with a single acquisition, Carbon Black seems to be slotted to fill in key areas for VMware’s broader endpoint play, Workspace ONE. This acquisition closes the loop from access management to threat detection and mitigation.VMUG Blog Image 1.png

Given Veritas’s focus on ensuring a robust plan for recovering from ransomware coupled with a long partnership with VMware, we should soon see more to come in this space as organizations of all shapes and sizes struggle with increased activity from bad actors in the space.