Carbon Black has announced a definitive agreement to merge with VMware, with the virtualization company paying around $2.1bn for the endpoint protection vendor.
With a view to create a “highly differentiated, intrinsic security cloud,” the deal will see VMware be better positioned to better protect enterprise workloads and clients through Big Data, behavioral analytics and AI.
“By bringing Carbon Black into the VMware family, we are now taking a huge step forward in security and delivering an enterprise-grade platform to administer and protect workloads, applications and networks,” said Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware.
The combination of Carbon Black’s solutions with VMware’s security offerings, including AppDefense, Workspace ONE, NSX and SecureState, will create a modern security cloud platform for any application, running on any cloud, on any device, the company said. “This combined offering will provide customers advanced threat detection and in-depth application behavior insight to stop sophisticated attacks and accelerate responses,” a statement read.
Patrick Morley, CEO of Carbon Black, said in a blog post that this was “a massive opportunity” as there is an “opportunity here for Carbon Black to truly disrupt the security industry — and ultimately help more customers stay safe from cyber-attacks.”
Morley added: “VMware has a vision to create a modern security platform for any app, running on any cloud, delivered to any device – essentially, to build security into the fabric of the compute stack. Carbon Black’s cloud-native platform, our ability to see and stop attackers by leveraging the power of our rich data and behavioral analytics, and our deep cybersecurity expertise are all truly differentiating. As a result, VMware approached Carbon Black to deliver on this vision.
“Our product strategy stays the same. Our roadmap stays the same. Our customer support stays the same. The entire product portfolio, cloud and on-premises, is included in the merger – now backed by the extensive global footprint and GTM resources from VMware. In fact, the plan is to invest more aggressively in Carbon Black and leverage our combined strengths to accelerate our growth and execute our vision for our customers.”
Carbon Black will exist as an independent business unit within VMware, and become VMware’s Security Business Unit. Launched in 2007 as Bit9, the company was known as Bit9 & Carbon Black after it acquired Carbon Black in February 2014, and officially assumed the company name Carbon Black in February 2016.