All The Ways Carbon Black Can Achieve VMware CEO's Vision Of Unified Security

Technology gained from the $2.1 billion acquisition will find its way into multiple VMware security products, says VMware COO at VMworld

CEO Pat Gelsinger has long lamented the state of the security market, frustrated by what he sees as too many point solutions from too many vendors creating a patchwork of complexity for enterprises to manage.

Central to VMware's plan to confront that lingering challenge is Carbon Black, a $2.1 billion gambit aimed at unifying multiple VMware data protection solutions into a cohesive and impenetrable security platform.

"Pat has been saying, fundamentally, the security industry needs to change. Too many point products, no platform," said VMware COO Sanjay Poonen in a keynote at the VMworld conference in San Francisco.

"This industry needs to be reshaped," Poonen added.

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Carbon Black brings into the VMware umbrella 56,000 customers, and more than 500 security-focused partners that bring to market a security cloud with three unique and defining features: powered by artificial intelligence, smart and lightweight agents, and cloud-native delivery.

Once the blockbuster deal closes, that technology will be deeply integrated into a range of VMware security modules to help realize Gelsinger's vision.

When you add Carbon Black to eight or nine modules within the VMware ecosystem, "you get magic," Poonen said.

That starts with AppDefense, a product launched at the same event two years earlier that protects apps at the virtualization layer by continually verifying they are running as expected.

VMware will ultimately make AppDefense, powered by Carbon Black, an agentless solution running on a vSphere server, he said. "No one else can do that."

Another natural fit is integrating VMware's Workspace One endpoint management platform with Carbon Black endpoint security, he said.

Carbon Black technology will also enhance VMware's network threat analytics when it's embedded into the NSX network virtualization platform.

Likewise for the product stemming from the 2018 acquisition of CloudCoreo, which enforces configuration management and proactively identifies public cloud risks during deployment to prevent breaches and compliance violations.

"We can take Carbon Black to that," Poonen said.

VMware "then can take that to our partner Dell," he said of the joint solutions with its parent company, such as VxRail, a hyper-converged solution.

To the VARs attending VMworld, Poonen said, "all of you will get the benefit of this as we work to create a vibrant ecosystem."