VMware Completes Pivotal Acquisition & Acquisition History
As you may recall a couple of months ago, VMware announced its intent to acquire Pivotal from Dell Technologies. By including Pivotal into the VMware fold, it opens up new opportunities to have Kubernetes supported natively directly in the vSphere product line among other benefits.
On 30th December 2019, a press announcement was released to confirm that the acquisition of Pivotal was now complete.
2019 has been another defining year for VMware with some significant acquisitions and this made me think about all of the acquisitions that I can remember VMware completing over the years (and whilst investigating this, a number of additional ones that I had forgotten or hadn’t realised). This post is, therefore, an opportunity to list and provide some information about previous acquisitions.
This is the link to the official VMware acquisition page: https://www.vmware.com/company/acquisitions.html
2008
Number of Acquisitions: 2
Blue Lane Technologies (October 2008)
Blue Lane Technologies was a network security vendor who had developed inline patching technology as well as software that shielded virtual machines from security threats in network traffic. This was at the hypervisor layer to provide real-time protection. VMware vShield Zones was built on key technologies and software from Blue Lane Technologies.
Trango (November 2008)
Trango built real-time hypervisors and development tools for embedded systems. They developed virtualisation software that lets a single mobile phone run several operating systems at the same time. VMware’s Mobile Virtualization Platform (MVP) is built on the technology acquired from Trango and lets users run multiple profiles on a single phone, each isolated from each other.
2009
Number of Acquisitions: 1
vFabric (SpringSource) (September 2009)
SpringSource, the innovator and driving force behind some of the most popular and fastest growing open source developer communities, application frameworks, runtimes, and management tools, simplifies the process of writing Java applications. VMware and SpringSource simplified the ‘build, run and manage’ experience. VMware continues to innovate and develop integrated Platform as a Service (PaaS) solutions that can be hosted at customer datacenters or at cloud service providers. SpringSource became a division of VMware.
2010
Number of Acquisitions: 5
RTO Software (February 2010)
RTO software creates user profile management and application-focused performance monitoring tools to improve user experience and performance. Persona management is an important part of the VMware strategy. They acquired three products from RTO Software that helped to improve profile management and user experience, monitor application performance and provide IT asset management tools.
RabbitMQ (April 2010)
RabbitMQ is an open source multi-protocol, portable messaging system that is ideally suited for applications deployed to a cloud environment. As a key infrastructure element for enterprise applications, the lightweight, scalable messaging of RabbitMQ routes user requests to the appropriate resource, wherever they reside. SpringSource extended its application platform using the Rabbit Technologies Ltd acquisition. This allowed clear integration with the Spring Framework to help Spring developers leverage RabbitMQ.
EMC Ionix (April 2010)
EMC Ionix IT management business solutions improved management and development of servers and applications in virtualised datacenters. EMC Ionix focused on simplifying and automating IT management to accelerate the journey to cloud computing and provide visibility and compliance throughout the infrastructure. Five products were included as part of the acquisition (Service Manager, Application Discovery Manager, Server Configuration Manager, FastScale Application Stack Manager, Configuration Analytics Manager). These have since been developed into the following products from VMware – Service Manager, vCenter Application Discovery Manager, vRealize Configuration Manager, vCenter Application Stack Manager and vCenter Configuration Analytics Manager
GemStone Systems (May 2010)
GemStone Systems developed an array of real-time data management solutions including GemFire Enterprise, a highly scalable distributed data platform. GemFire enables the delivery of the right data to the right applications at the right time, wherever those applications are hosted. The high level of performance and scalability makes GemFire ideal for mission-critical applications in industries that rely on massive amounts of real-time data. GemStone was acquired by SpringSource and enhanced VMware’s suite of application infrastructure software with an important middleware capability. This has been developed into Pivotal GemFire.
TriCipher (August 2010)
TriCipher has been a pioneer in the field of identity and access management as a service. Over 3,000 public and private web and SaaS applications use TriCipher’s seamless single sign-on with secure authentication. SaaS authentication and access management are even more important as companies evolve to a hybrid cloud environment. The acquired products (MyOneLogin, TACS, TAG, IDTool2Go, MSB) have evolved into Horizon Application Manager.
2011
Number of Acquisitions: 8
NeoAccel Corporation (January 2011)
Faster, easier and less expensive to deploy than IPsec VPNs, NeoAccel solutions reduce costs and increase IT control by eliminating the configuration, management, and support complexities of IPSec VPN clients. The acquired product, SSLVPN Plus, has been developed to form part of VMware vCloud Networking and Security.
WaveMaker (March 2011)
WaveMaker lets non-technical users build standard Java applications with visual drag-and-drop tools instead of writing code. Expert developers can then take over in the Spring environment to fine tune and provide advanced functionality. The WaveMaker product became vFabric WaveMaker and has since been acquired by Pramati in May 2013.
SlideRocket (April 2011)
As the leading SaaS-based business presentation provider, SlideRocket leverages cloud computing, collaboration, social media and mobile computing platforms to help customers build, deliver and share presentations more effectively. ClearSlide acquired SlideRocket from VMware in March 2013.
Shavlik Technologies (May 2011)
In April 2013, LANDesk announced that it had acquired the VMware Protect product family, which came to VMware through the acquisition of Shavlik Technologies. In June 2013, all VMware Protect products, including all editions of vCenter Protect, vCenter Protect Update Catalog, and Go/Go Pro and support for these products were only available through LANDesk.
Socialcast (May 2011)
Socialcast’s enterprise collaboration platform unites people, applications and data in real-time. In May 2018, VMware announced the end of availability for the Socialcast platform. Clients with licenses beyond that point had been provided with extended support but only until May 2019.
Digital Fuel (July 2011)
Digital Fuel’s portfolio for IT costing, budget, chargeback, cost optimisation, vendor management and SLA management helped companies plan, manage and optimise cost and value in cloud-based dynamic IT infrastructures. These capabilities developed into vRealize Business Enterprise which was subsequently acquired by SkyView Partners. vRealize Business for Cloud continues to be part of VMware as part of the vRealize portfolio.
Integrien Corporation (August 2011)
Integrien’s patented real-time datacenter performance analytics and management software helps customers manage application and infrastructure performance, turning data from existing management tools into actionable intelligence. VMware was able to utilise the technology to offer a new level of automation and control to support virtualised applications and cloud infrastructures. Integrien Alive Enterprise morphed into part of vRealize Operations Manager.
PacketMotion (August 2011)
PacketMotion delivered user activity context for data access monitoring and network segmentation, including PacketSentry Virtual Probe, which monitors and enforces identity based network access controls in VMware vSphere as well as rich user access monitoring reports for compliance. This acquisition provided the ‘who’ element of their security and compliance solutions. This now forms part of VMware vCloud Networking and Security.
2012
Number of Acquisitions: 6
iTHC (April 2012)
Info Tech Health Check (iTHC) is a benchmarking consultancy that developed and licensed IT benchmarks across 20 industries, four geographies and over 3,500 parameters. The acquisition of iTHC assets complemented VMware’s overall services strategy and partner community investments. Acquired products, BM Lite, QuickStart and Comprehensive Benchmark became VMware IT Benchmark Basic (BM Lit) and VMware IT Benchmark Tower.
Cetas Software (April 2012)
Cetas is a Cloud Data Analytics company driving next generation Big Data analytics and predictive intelligence systems that can operate at a scale of hundreds of terabytes and billions of events for online companies and enterprises. Pivotal assumed the responsibility to fulfil license, maintenance and professional services to VMware customers who had purchased Cetas.
Wanova (May 2012)
VMware acquired Wanova Inc for its Mirage product which provided turnkey end user capabilities to simplify the management of desktop images, while providing desktop continuity, especially for distributed and mobile PCs. This was available for VMware Horizon 6 but was discontinued in May 2018.
DynamicOps, Inc (July 2012)
DynamicOps was a leader in the emerging market for cloud automation solutions that enabled provisioning and management of IT services across heterogeneous environments. The DynamicOps Cloud Automation Suite and Development Kit were integrated into the VMware vRealize Automation product.
Pattern Insight (July 2012)
Pattern Insight provides search and analytics for unstructured log data which helped address VMware customers’ growing need for advanced analytics-based approaches to operations management in highly dynamic virtualised and cloud environments. Pattern Insights Log Insight product became VMware Log Insight.
Nicira (August 2012)
Nicira was a network virtualisation company and is now a key component of VMware’s Software Defined Data Center strategy. Nicira’s Network Virtualisation Platform (NVP) enables the dynamic creation of virtual network infrastructure and services that are completely decoupled and independent from the physical network hardware. Innovative companies such as AT&T, DreamHost, eBay, NTT and Rackspace used Nicira NVP to accelerate service delivery from weeks to minutes and dramatically reduce data centre complexity and cost. Nicira NVP became VMware NSX.
2013
Number of Acquisitions: 2
Virsto (February 2013)
Virsto Software changes the economics of storage in virtualised environments by improving utilisation, increasing performance, and accelerating VM storage provisioning. Virsto reduces the cost and complexity of storage for VDI, test and development, business-critical application virtualisation, cloud computing and other virtualisation initiatives. Virsto accelerated VMware’s development of storage technologies, allowing our customers to greatly improve the efficiency and performance of storage in virtual infrastructure.
Desktone (October 2013)
Desktone was an industry leader in desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) with an advanced multi-tenant desktop virtualisation platform for deliverying Windows desktops and applications as a cloud service. By bringing Desktone’s innovative platform in house, VMware accelerated the delivery of DaaS through its network of over 11,000 VMware service provider partners. The addition of the Desktone platform further extended the benefits of desktop virtualisation by offering an additional choice to organisations looking for predictable economics, flexibility of cloud deployment or simple deployment and management due to the lack of resources or in-house VDI expertise. The Desktone product became part of VMware Horizon DaaS Platform.
2014
Number of Acquisitions: 3
Airwatch (February 2014)
The acquisition of Airwatch, a leading provider of enterprise mobile management and security solutions, expanded VMware’s End-User Computing group. The offerings formed an expanded portfolio of mobile solutions to complement VMware’s portfolio. This became VMware Airwatch (and has been morphing into Workspace One)
Third Sky (March 2014)
Third Sky was a full service IT Service Management consulting, education, and technology provider headquartered in San Francisco. The addition of Third Sky provided VMware with an experienced consulting team to extend their capabilities with additional insights, methods and experience relating to IT Service Management (ITSM) best practices. An established thought leader in ITSM, their experts co-authored the ITIL 2011 edition. The Third Sky team joined and complemented VMware’s existing Accelerate Advisory Services. Together, the combined practice assisted clients to achieve business transformation through IT transformation.
CloudVolumes (August 2014)
CloudVolumes was a leading provider of real-time application delivery technology that enables enterprises to deliver any application to any virtualised environment on-demand. Adding CloudVolumes to VMware Horizon changed the game for desktop virtualisation and addressed the application delivery and performance challenge faced by all solution providers. With real-time application delivery in virtual desktops and application servers, customers are able to create personalised desktops and application environments at an unmatched infrastructure cost per user. CloudVolumes became VMware App Volumes.
2015
Number of Acquisitions: 2
Immidio (February 2015)
Immidio provided enterprise user environment management (UEM) offerings. VMware was able to deliver a native UEM solution that provides customers with a consistent and dynamic desktop experience that is independent of operating system, device and location, for true ‘business mobility’. Immidio FlexPlus became VMware Dynamic Environment Manager.
Boxer, Inc. (October 2015)
Boxer, Inc. was a privately held company that offered a comprehensive and secure personal information management (PIM) solution for mobile devices to businesses and consumers. Boxer enables the secure synchronisation and use of native and third party productivity applications (email, calendar, tasks and contacts) and enterprise social collaboration tools (Salesforce, Box, Evernote etc.) across mobile devices and platforms. Boxer’s technology enhances the AirWatch Inbox solution with a robust mobile personal information management (PIM) client.
2016
Number of Acquisitions: 2
Arkin (June 2016)
Arkin Net was a leader in software-defined data centre security and operations. By adding Arkin Net to its portfolio, VMware was able to help customers accelerate their adoption of VMware NSX and Software-Defined Data Centres. Arkin Net became part of VMware vRealize Network Insight.
QTS (August 2016) – divestiture
In August 2016, QTS acquired the VMware vCloud Government Service offering, including the co-branded FedRAMP – certified IaaS solution.
2017
Number of Acquisitions: 3
Wavefront (April 2017)
Wavefront offers a real-time metrics monitoring and streaming analytics platform designed for developers to optimise their clouds and modern applications that rely on containers and microservices. A cloud-hosted service, Wavefront offers Digital Enterprises the ability to send time-series (metric) data from anywhere in their data centre and to perform queries, render charts to see analytics, anomalies or KPI dashboards. Wavefront has become Wavefront by VMware.
Apteligent (May 2017)
The Apteligent platform helps developers of mobile applications and IT organisations analyse mobile application performance in real-time, and understand user behaviour for their mission critical apps to address issues that matter the most and have direct impact on business and revenue. VMware will be looking to integrate Apteligent into the VMware Digital Workspace Platform but is currently running under the name Apteligent by VMware.
VeloCloud (December 2017)
VeloCloud is the market leader in cloud-delivered SD-WAN that enables enterprises and service providers to deploy flexible, secure WAN connectivity. With VeloCloud, VMware will build on the success of the industry’s leading network virtualisation platform, NSX, and expand the company’s networking portfolio to address end-to-end automation, application continuity, branch transformation and security from the data centre to cloud edge. This is now known as VeloCloud by VMware.
2018
Number of Acquisitions: 6
CloudCoreo (February 2018)
CloudCoreo offers a solution for proactively identifying public cloud risks at the time of deployment to prevent breaches of compliance violations before they occur. The solution also continuously scans and monitors cloud infrastructure to keep applications and data safe. At present it is unknown whether CloudCoreo will continue to be a separate product within VMware or will be amalgamated into another product.
CloudVelox (February 2018)
CloudVelox is a pioneer in enabling workload mobility between the data center and public clouds. The software they’ve built accelerates workload mobility at scale resulting in ‘mass migrations’ being completed successfully in weeks rather than nine to 12 months. VMware expects to integrate the CloudVelox technology into VMware HCS Services.
E8 Security (March 2018)
E8 Security provides user and entity behaviour analytics capabilities to the VMware digital workspace platform, Workspace One, and will enable customers to utilise a single platform to manage and correlate security data to accurately detect and respond to advanced threats.
CloudHealth (August 2018)
More than 3,700 organisations globally relied on CloudHealth, when they were acquired, to manage over $5B in combined cloud spend, based on the platform’s ability to easily manage cost, ensure security compliance, improve governance and automate actions across multi-cloud environments. This is provided under the name CloudHealth by VMware.
Dell EMC (August 2018)
VMware announced its intention to acquire the technology and team of Dell EMC Service Assurance Suite product, software for network service assurance for communications service providers. The addition of Dell EMC Service Assurance Suite technology to the VMware portfolio provides an end-to-end, best-in-class suite of products, enabling and assuring the operation of physical and virtual networks spanning from transport to core to edge, data to cloud. These have become VMware Smart Assurance and VMware Smart Experience.
Heptio (November 2018)
Heptio is the leader in the open Kubernetes ecosystem providing products and expertise that helps organisations deploy and operationalise Kubernetes. Heptio was founded by Joe Beda and Craig McLuckie, two of the creators of Kubernetes. The Heptio acquisition is a big driver behind the recent announcements of native Kubernetes support in vSphere.
2019
Number of Acquisitions: 8
Aetherpal (February 2019)
Aetherpal is a provider of remote support solutions that enable IT to remotely view, control, troubleshoot, and fix devices and applications in the field to improve productivity and efficiency, while reducing downtime. Aetherpal’s modern approach to enabling remote support will add to the intelligence-driven Workspace One platform and its deep cross-platform Unified Endpoint Management (UEM) capabilities, reinforcing VMware’s commitment to simplifying customers’ digital workspace journey.
Bitnami (May 2019)
Bitnami offers a suite of products and projects that accelerate the delivery of applications to multiple clouds including Kubernetes environments. Bitnami will enable VMware customers to easily deploy application packages on any cloud – public or hybrid – and in the most optimal format – virtual machine (VM), containers and Kubernetes helm charts. Bitnami will also be able to augment VMware’s existing efforts to deliver a curated marketplace to VMware customers that offer a rich set of applications and development environments in addition to infrastructure software.
Avi Networks (June 2019)
Avi Networks is a leader in multi-cloud application delivery services. Leveraging a common architectural foundation, VMware and Avi Networks will deliver the industry’s only complete software-defined networking stack from L2-7 built for the modern multi-cloud era.
BitFusion (July 2019)
BitFusion is a pioneer in the virtualisation of hardware accelerated devices with a strong focus on GPU technology. BitFusion offers a software platform that decouples specific physical resources from the servers they are attached to in the environment. The acquisition of BitFusion will bolster VMware’s strategy of supporting AI- and ML- based workloads by virtualising hardware accelerators. These accelerators can be used regardless of location in the environment – on-premises and/or in the cloud.
Uhana (July 2019)
Uhana has built a real-time deep learning engine to optimise carrier network operations and application quality experience, deployable in the operator private cloud or public cloud infrastructure. Uhana will also power intelligence and analytics for VMware Smart Assurance.
Veriflow (August 2019)
Veriflow is a pioneer in network verification and troubleshooting, helping customers model, analyse and verify their hybrid networks to allow IT teams to operate, secure and resilient networks. VMware plans to invest in and integrate Veriflow into vRealize Network Insight to increase its overall network monitoring and troubleshooting capabilities and adding new dimensions of network verification and What-If analysis directly to the platform.
Carbon Black (October 2019)
Carbon Black is a leading next-generation security cloud provider. Carbon Black has created an innovative cloud-native security platform, with a smart, lightweight agent, and an AI/ML-based Data Lake in the Cloud that provides comprehensive protection of endpoints and defence against a variety of threats. This acquisition represents the evolution of VMware’s intrinsic security strategy, where security features are built into the infrastructure and across workloads, clients and applications.
Pivotal (December 2019)
Pivotal offers a powerful set of developer assets with a leading developer-centric platform and services that accelerate modern app development. Combining Pivotal’s develop-centric offerings with VMware’s Kubernets run-time infrastructure and management tools will deliver value above the multi-cloud infrastructure layer by bringing order, stability and security to software delivery.
Obviously this doesn’t include any of the acquisitions that VMware either wants to forget about or are not valid in their current portfolio. I have included a list of some of these below… I may provide more information about these in a future post:
- Asset Optimization Group – October 2005
- Akimbi Systems – June 2006
- Propero – April 2007
- Dunes Technologies – September 2007
- B-hive Networks – July 2008
- Tungsten Graphics – November 2008
- Zimbra – January 2010
- Continuent – October 2014