VMware Finalizes AirWatch Acquisition
After more than a month, VMware has completed its acquisition of enterprise mobile management company AirWatch. The acquisition helps to solidify VMware as the company to beat in the race for mobile device management (MDM) supremacy against the likes of Citrix, Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (APPL).
After more than a month, VMware (VMW) has completed its acquisition of enterprise mobile management company AirWatch. The acquisition helps to solidify VMware as the company to beat in the race for mobile device management (MDM) supremacy against the likes of Citrix (CTXS), Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (APPL).
The acquisition, which put VMware back a cool $1.181 billion in cash and an additional $364 million in installed payments for assumed unvested equity, was finalized Feb. 24, officially adding AirWatch to VMware’s corner. According to the press release, AirWatch’s offerings will form an expanded portfolio of mobile solutions that are complementary to VMware’s portfolio.
Now that the deal is finalized, the AirWatch team, including CEO John Marshall, has become part of VMware’s End-User Computing team. AirWatch co-founder Alan Dabbiere will oversee a new AirWatch operating board, although further details as to Dabbiere’s responsibilities remain unclear.
"We are pleased to mark the closure of the AirWatch acquisition during the week of the seminal Mobile World Congress event, where we are bringing the industry's best enterprise mobile management and security solutions to our over 500,000 customers and 75,000 partners," said Sanjay Poonen, executive vice president and general manager of VMware's End-User Computing group, in a prepared statement. "We look forward to leveraging the considerable synergies of our joint engineering and go-to-market organizations, to deliver landmark innovation in enterprise mobility and secure content collaboration, for the post-PC world of heterogeneous devices—be it iOS, Android or Windows."
VMware has made it very clear that it intends to gain footing in the MDM market, which continues to become more and more profitable with the growth and general acceptance of the BYOD transformation within many IT organizations. VMware, which is already known for its software virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions, previously said that AirWatch was the best company in the business when it came to MDM, thus spurring the costly acquisition last month.
