VMware acquires AirWatch. Here's our first impression.
This morning VMware announced that it will acquire enterprise mobility management vendor AirWatch.
This morning VMware announced that it will acquire enterprise mobility management vendor AirWatch. (Press release here.) In a single move, this answers any remaining questions about VMware's commitment to end user computing, and the importance of enterprise mobility management.
Here at BrianMadden.com, we've had a long history of wondering what VMware was up to in the mobile space. Most recently, AppDetective blogged that VMware had no choice but to make a mobile acquisition soon. To follow that up, I outlined the current state of VMware's enterprise mobility management offerings.
As our coverage of enterprise mobility management has expanded over the last 2 1/2 years, we've maintained that as end user computing evolves, EMM will be an increasing important component.
VMware will pay approximately $1.54 billion for AirWatch. This shows that not only do they want to get into EMM in a big way, it's more than just a side bet. There many smaller companies they could have bought for less money, but instead, they're going in big.
It's also interesting that now people will be comparing VMware to Citrix in the mobility space, just like we've been comparing their desktop virtualization solutions for years.
We're getting on the phone with VMware later today, so stay tuned to BrianMadden.com over the coming days and weeks for more in-depth analysis.
Finally, if you need to get up to speed on EMM, mobile device management, mobile app management, and how these technologies actually work, I humbly suggest you head over to Amazon for a copy of my book "Enterprise Mobility Management: Everything you need to know about MDM, MAM, and BYOD."
Wow, the fact that this purchase price is so high is huge. The $1.54B total price includes $1.175B in cash. VMware literally wired Airwatch over a billion dollars. You're right that that shows that VMware believes this space is legit and they're not just working some huge deal amount for the press release. (That's what Citrix did when they bought XenSource. The press release said the deal was valued at $500M, so the industry latched onto that number, but really it was only like $10M in cash with the rest future payments based on certain milestones, etc.)
But this deal being over a billion worth of cash, man, this is really something.
I totally agree too that this helps to validate both the industry at large, and our decision for both BrianMadden.com and BriForum to include EMM coverage. Trust me.. EMM is a part of EUC, whether people want to believe it or not.
And, yeah, funny as you say now how Citrix and VMware are two of the Top 3 companies in the EMM space. The more things change, the more they stay the same. :)