Next week is going to be a busy one for VMware as the company’s VMworld event kicks off in San Francisco. There will be plenty of talking points – and the virtualisation and end user computing provider has opted to add two more with the acquisitions of Pivotal Software and Carbon Black for a combined $4.8 billion (£3.93bn).
Pivotal, at $2.7bn, edged out endpoint security provider Carbon Black ($2.1bn) in terms of price, but the rationale for both companies makes sense. Pivotal will fit in to the company’s vision around application development, Kubernetes and multi-cloud, as Paul Fazzone, VMware SVP/GM cloud native apps explained.
“We know Pivotal, and Pivotal knows VMware. VMware and Pivotal share a commitment to the community – collectively we’re a force across Kubernetes, Cloud Foundry and developer technologies,” Fazzone wrote in a blog post. “We share vision – we offer the most complete approach to application modernisation on any cloud.”
This was a view echoed by Pivotal CEO Rob Mee in a letter to employees. “We’ll expand the opportunities for both companies by unifying our software story and deepening our relationships with even more customers,” wrote Mee. “Together we will form an organisation that combines Pivotal’s expertise modernising organisations with VMware’s capabilities and experience operating at scale.”
As far as Carbon Black is concerned, VMware sees the security provider as a more-than-useful foil for its overall goal to be the ‘digital foundation for any cloud, app and device’ as the company puts it. The two firms had previously been partners around application security product AppDefense.
“VMware believes that security is in dire need of transformation,” wrote Tom Corn, SVP/GM security products in a blog. “It needs to shift from a bolted-on model with thousands of point products, agents and appliances, all focused on different points of infrastructure – to a built-in model where the technology is embedded into the cloud and mobile fabric, and security becomes a distributed service rather than point tools.”
The company’s biggest acquisition of 2019 thus far was that of Bitnami, provider of application packaging and delivery services, back in May. VMware otherwise has been focusing a fair part of its strategy on being a facilitator of hyperscale cloud providers. VMware Cloud on AWS is well-noted, but earlier this month the company extended its deal with Google Cloud.
VMworld US takes place from August 25-29. Take a look at CloudTech’s coverage of the event by visiting the VMware page here.
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