VMware has completed its acquisition of Pivotal, with the company set to leverage its new subsidiary’s technology in its Tanzu portfolio of products and services.
Using Pivotal’s technology, Tanzu promises to help customers transform the way they build, run and manage their most important applications, with Kubernetes as the common infrastructure substrate. The combination of Pivotal’s developer-centric offerings with VMware’s upstream Kubernetes run-time infrastructure and management tools will deliver a comprehensive enterprise solution that VMware says enables dramatic improvements in developer productivity in the creation of modern applications.
“It’s my pleasure to announce Ray O’Farrell as the leader of VMware’s new Modern Applications Platform business unit—uniting the Pivotal and VMware Cloud Native Applications teams,” said Pat Gelsinger, CEO, VMware.
“And as Pivotal is now part of VMware, I want to thank the Pivotal leadership team for building a great company. Together, we’re poised to be the leading enabler of Kubernetes with a deep understanding of both operators and developers.”
Kubernetes is seen as the next big thing in IT development, and nearly every company is clamouring to be the leader in the space. HPE recently announced a Container Platform for Kubernetes, while Rackspace is offering assistance to its customers who want to get started with the technology.
“Digital transformation and the applications that drive it should not be restricted only to cloud and software giants,” said Ray O’Farrell, executive vice president and general manager, Modern Applications Platform Business Unit, VMware.
“We believe that modern application development solutions and practices need to be easily accessible to everyday enterprises across the globe. With Pivotal’s developer capabilities as the foundation, we’ll focus on delivering consumable, enterprise-ready cloud native offerings to customers to help them achieve better business outcomes.”
Edward Hieatt, senior vice president, customer success, Pivotal, added, “Pivotal has fundamentally changed how the world’s biggest brands build and manage software with a focus on developer productivity through platform abstractions and development techniques as well as connecting the business with the developer.
“The combination of Pivotal and VMware offers the most comprehensive application platform in the industry and is a win for our customers, a win for Pivotal, and a win for VMware. We’re excited to team up with VMware to help more enterprises become like modern software companies by adopting DevOps and Lean techniques developed by internet giants and the startup community.”
Numerous mutual customers including Raytheon have reacted positively to the news of the acquisition.
Here is Raytheon’s impression of the combination of VMware and Pivotal:
“By working with both Pivotal and VMware, we’ve been able to completely transform how we write software for our military and government customers,” said Todd Probert, vice president for C2, Space and Intelligence at Raytheon.
“Combining these companies under a single umbrella is going to make it possible for my team to get code to our customers even faster and easier.”
The acquisition of Pivotal cost VMware $2.7 billion, with Pivotal now operating as a wholly owned subsidiary under the VMware brand.
