VMworld: Look at Acquisitions for Virtualization's Cloud Play

When the doors swing open at San Francisco's Moscone Center to welcome attendees to this year's VMworld conference, host company VMware will be considerably larger than it was at last year's event. Since the doors shut on the last VMware lovefest in Las Vegas, the Dell-owned company has been on a buying spree that has seen 10 new VMware acquisitions.

The latest deal was a $4.8 billion two-fer announced Thursday, in which the virtualization and networking company revealed it's acquiring cloud-centered Pivotal Software for $2.7 billion dollars and the cybersecurity firm Carbon Black for $2.1 billion. Both purchases are expected to be completed by January 31.

The buying spree is part of VMware's efforts to transform itself from its roots as a virtualization company into a container and Kubernetes (and yes, virtualization) focused cloud-everything company. Like everyone else these days, VMware wants you to chose it to be your guide as you move to a multi-cloud and edge infrastructure. It's amassed a number of companies to bolster its sales pitch to customers.

This could result in a rather crowded stage at Monday morning's opening keynote if CEO Pat Gelsinger and COO Sanjay Poonen present a parade of VIPs from the companies they've acquired since the last VMworld as they "expand on VMware’s business strategy and spotlight new innovations across the company’s portfolio," per their promises.

To help you figure out who's whom if you plan to attend the event (or watch it live stream), we've put together a brief list of the companies VMware has acquired during the last year, presented in chronological order by date of announcement, along with a look at what they bring to the table.

[Read the rest of Christine Hall's article on IT Pro Today.]

Christine Hall has been a journalist since 1971. In 2001 she began writing a weekly consumer computer column and began covering IT full time in 2002, focusing on Linux and open source software. Since 2010 she's published and edited the website FOSS Force. Follow her on Twitter: @BrideOfLinux.