VMware Acquires Virtual Network Manager Arkin Net

VMware will acquire a little known company,Arkin Net, by the end of June. The deal will help enhance VMware's ability to build and manage virtual networks tied to hundreds or thousands of virtual machines.

Integrating virtual networking with virtual machine operation is one of the last steps VMware needed in order to support its claim of establishing the software-defined data center. The acquisition also broadens VMware's mission from simply generating and managing virtual machines to managing virtual servers, storage, and network services throughout the data center.

In some ways, VMware bet the bank on its ability to virtualize the network through its NSX virtual networking product.

With its Nicira acquisition for $1.26 billion in 2014, VMware bet that it could produce a marketable network virtualization product that would push aside established players. It risked its hitherto close business relationship with Cisco. It also outlined as a goal a software-defined data center in which it was essential to convert the hardwired network to a more plastic and configurable system via network segmentation by means of virtualization.

Using VMware's "beachhead" in server virtualization, Shekar Ayyar, corporate senior vice president for strategy, wrote in a blog post June 12: "We have expanded our capabilities in the software-defined data center and Cloud by spanning compute, networking, storage, and management." Networking is the gap that the Arkin acquisition is trying to fill, he added.

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