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VMware Announces Intent to Acquire Octarine | VMware

Alex Wang

May 13, 2020

Breaking: VMware Announces Intent to Acquire Octarine to Extend VMware’s Intrinsic Security Capabilities for Containers and Kubernetes

By Alex Wang, Vice President, Corporate Development, VMware

For two years, VMware has driven the industry conversation around “intrinsic security.” Security should be built-in – not bolted-on. We believe that our approach to building security that is intrinsic to the infrastructure can dramatically simplify and strengthen our customers’ approach to security across any app, any cloud, and any device.

We continue to beat the drum of intrinsic security with our intent to acquire Octarine, a SaaS security platform for protecting containers and Kubernetes. You can read the details in our announcement here.

After the deal closes, Octarine will enable VMware Carbon Black Cloud to secure applications running in Kubernetes. VMware has invested heavily in helping our customers build new modern applications as well as modernize existing applications with our acquisitions of Pivotal, Bitnami and Heptio in recent years. As important as it is to help our customers increase developer productivity, security and operations still matter. Our acquisition of Octarine will help our customer to further protect their modern apps from build to run.

VMware’s M&A Approach in a New Environment
With the close of the Pivotal acquisition at the end of 2019, I reflected on our M&A approach and “our willingness and ability to execute a variety of complex transactions—large or small—to round out our product portfolio and talent.” The world has changed markedly in just a few short months with the onset of COVID-19 globally. Despite these difficult times, we continue to explore inorganic opportunities to add technologies and talent to VMware in support of our strategic priorities.

Octarine is a great example of that. They are a strong fit helping us address our key priorities of intrinsic security and app modernization. I look forward to Octarine joining the team.

Forward-Looking Statements

This release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, statements regarding VMware's intention to acquire Octarine, the expected benefits of the acquisition and the expected complementary nature and strategic advantages of combined offerings and opportunities after close. These forward-looking statements are subject to the safe harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) the ability of the parties to satisfy closing conditions to the acquisition on a timely basis or at all; (ii) market conditions, regulatory requirements and other corporate considerations that could affect the timing and closing conditions to the acquisition; (iii) the ability to successfully integrate acquired companies and assets into VMware; (iv) VMware’s customers’ ability to transition to new products, platforms, services, solutions and computing strategies in such areas as containerization, modern applications, intrinsic security and networking, cloud, digital workspaces, virtualization and the software defined data center, and the uncertainty of their acceptance of emerging technology; (v) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures, industry consolidation, entry of new competitors into the virtualization software and cloud, end user and mobile computing, and security industries, as well as new product and marketing initiatives by VMware’s competitors; (vi) VMware's ability to enter into and maintain strategically effective partnerships; (vii) rapid technological changes in the virtualization software and cloud, end user, security and mobile computing industries; (viii) other business effects, including those related to industry, market, economic, political, regulatory and global health conditions, such as the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic; (ix) VMware's ability to protect its proprietary technology; (x) VMware's ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; (xi) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (xii) changes in VMware's financial condition; and (xiii) VMware's relationship with Dell Technologies and Dell's ability to control matters requiring stockholder approval. These forward-looking statements are made as of the date of this blog, are based on current expectations and are subject to uncertainties and changes in condition, significance, value and effect as well as other risks detailed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including VMware's most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K that we may file from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. VMware assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.