Key Strategic Acquisitions That Reformed VMware


It was interesting to watch VMware grow from being a young Silicon Valley startup to a formidable large enterprise. Undoubtedly VMware was one of the fastest growing companies in the virtualization space, that’s why even after its acquisition in December 2003; EMC continued its operation as a separate software subsidiary, led by Diane Greene. 

 Right from the beginning VMware has always been very aggressive for its inorganic growth. It has always strengthened its portfolio by acquiring companies, whether you talk about Trango, a mobile virtualization company that was bought in 2008 or Immidio which was acquired in February 2015. In its entire journey VMware has bought almost two dozen companies. In the long list of acquisitions, some didn’t align with its mission. But a few stand out and played a critical role in redefining and reshaping the company. They took VMware into new segments and markets that it wouldn’t have gone by itself.

 Here is my analysis for some of the companies that created significant impact on VMware:

 DynamicOps – Acquired in 2012

 DynamicOps was a Massachusetts-based startup that was spun off from Credit Suisse. DynamicOps Cloud Suite, a product that enabled enterprise IT teams to create scalable private, public and desktop cloud services in days from their existing technology systems and processes.

 VMware’s vision of software defined data center was not just confined to vSphere. It very well knows that the enterprises were heterogeneous with substantial investments in Hyper-V, Xen, and AWS. VMware acquired DynamicOps to aligned its “IT-as-a-service” strategy by bringing non-vSphere environments into the fold.  Later DynamicOps became an integral part of vRealization Suite, which is now a a single pane of glass to manage the hybrid cloud environment.

 Nicira – Acquired in 2012

 Nicira was a company focused on software-defined networking (SDN) and network virtualization. It was founded in 2007 by Martin Casado, Nick McKeown and Scott Shenker. Nicira created their own proprietary versions of the OpenFlow, Open vSwitch, and OpenStack networking projects. 

 On July 23, 2012, VMware announced the acquisition of Nicira for $1.26 billion. This was one of the most strategic acquisition made by VMware. After their successful journey with vSphere hypervisor, they always wanted to repeat the magic with virtualized storage and networking products. Nicira’s acquisition quickly enabled VMware to become the key player in software defined data center and converged infrastructure maket space.
Desktone – Acquired in 2013

 VMware was trying its best to get an edge in VDI market for a long time. Its’ Horizon, View, and Mirage products were competing with Citrix, an established market leader in virtual desktops and applications. But one acquisition which gave VMware a major push in the VDI and DaaS market to cross Ctirix was Desktone.

 Desktone, Inc, was an industry leader in desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) with an advanced multi-tenant desktop virtualization platform for delivering Windows desktops and applications as a cloud service. 

 Desktone later become an integral part of VMware. It is powering Horizon Air, a DaaS platform delivered through vCloud Air. More than that, it got VMware a leg up on Citrix.
AirWatch – Acquired in 2014

 I always give credit to VMware for being agile and fast enough in aligning the industry trends. In case of mobility VMware sensed the industry trend much earlier than its competitors and started making right investment in it. It acquired AirWatch an enterprise mobility management (EMM) company for $1.54B. AirWatch helped VMware become relevant in the mobility world. 
To know more email: blog@calsoftinc.com
Anupam Bhide | Calsoft Inc.

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