The News: VMware disclosed on Wednesday a deal to buy Datrium in a bid to bolster its cloud-based disaster recovery capabilities—and its larger hybrid cloud ambitions—with the startup’s innovative hyper-converged technology.
Datrium will enable the Dell Technologies-owned virtualization giant to deliver on its vision for a cost-optimized option to protect data stored either on-premises or on Amazon Web Services’ infrastructure in its Disaster Recovery-as-a-Service portfolio, said Andrew Wang, VMware’s vice president for strategy and corporate development, in a company blog post.
Financial terms were not disclosed. Read the full news item on CRN.
Analyst Take: VMware has made some headlines in the past week. The most recent being a possible spin off from Dell Tech or a complete acquisition of the remaining 19% of the stock. The former seems to be picking up momentum in the media, but I do still think it could be a year away.
This acquisition of Datrium comes at a good time for VMware. The company has rapidly pivoted from virtualization to a full fledged multi-cloud software provider. And with workloads being deployed across the cloud and on-prem, the need for intelligent disaster recovery will continue to grow.
Datrium, being a later stage VC backed company had already built a solid rapport with VMware. While VMware had an existing DR solution, its solution was more of a premium tool focused on performance. Datrium, would provide a timely offering that would decrease spend and optimize DR for multi-cloud. It would certainly expand the current offering and given the challenging economic environment be an appealing offer for more companies that have data and workloads across the cloud.
I also find the acquisition to have the potential to bring immediate growth to Datrium as the partnership yielded a certain amount of business, but having the full support of the VMware salesforce and marketing engine should yield immediate wins–this should be visible in the first few quarters after the acquisition is completed.
A question for me is around the continued competitive nature with legacy Dell EMC. So long as the companies are all housed as part of the Dell Technologies family, this is a bit less of a concern, but it does strengthen the offering of an independent VMware if Dell decides to go in that direction.
Overall Impressions of VMware Acquisition of Datrium
I believe the acquisition of Datrium by VMware is a strong move that continues to provide a broader offering to support multi-cloud and the required disaster recovery that is needed in modernized cloud architectures.
Given the existing partnership that was in place between the two companies and the small(ish) size of Datrium, I feel the acquisition and integration can be done in a somewhat smooth motion that should allow the offerings to come under VMware’s roof and be innovated and updated upon.
The continued diversification and expansion of VMware will obviously pose more questions on the ongoing conversations around Dell Technologies potential spin off of VMware–a rumor that has gained momentum in the past few weeks. While this, by no means in itself will drive that–the independent moves of the company to strengthen its offerings outside of the Dell Tech portfolio is certainly a sign of potential for a strong independent VMware, if that is the direction things go.
Futurum Research provides industry research and analysis. These columns are for educational purposes only and should not be considered in any way investment advice.
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Image Credit: VMware
The original version of this article was first published on Futurum Research.
Daniel Newman is the Principal Analyst of Futurum Research and the CEO of Broadsuite Media Group. Living his life at the intersection of people and technology, Daniel works with the world’s largest technology brands exploring Digital Transformation and how it is influencing the enterprise. From Big Data to IoT to Cloud Computing, Newman makes the connections between business, people and tech that are required for companies to benefit most from their technology projects, which leads to his ideas regularly being cited in CIO.Com, CIO Review and hundreds of other sites across the world. A 5x Best Selling Author including his most recent “Building Dragons: Digital Transformation in the Experience Economy,” Daniel is also a Forbes, Entrepreneur and Huffington Post Contributor. MBA and Graduate Adjunct Professor, Daniel Newman is a Chicago Native and his speaking takes him around the world each year as he shares his vision of the role technology will play in our future.