While it may be grabbing all the headlines, Microsoft Corp.’s purchase of LinkedIn Inc. for $26 billion today isn’t the only new update from the tech industry’s mergers and acquisitions scene. This morning saw VMware Inc. join the fray as well by scooping up Arkin Net Inc., a low-key data center automation specalist based in Mountain View.

The startup hit the scene last year with $7 million in funding and a tool designed to make the virtualization giant’s NSX software-defined networking offering easier to operate. It places a particular focus on helping companies exploit the system’s much-touted microsegemention feature, which provides the ability to isolate workloads from one another. The functionality is tremendously useful for attack mitigation purpose, but can often be difficult to use since it requires painstakingly sorting related components into security groups. Arkin’s technology streamlines the chore by automatically figuring out the optimal arrangement for an environment based on workload dependencies and infrastructure requirements.

The resulting productivity improvement not only reduces the amount of time that administrators have to spend configuring NSX but also accelerates the implementation effort in the process. And to ease operations even further, Arkin’s algorithms continue watching the environment after the initial setup to stay on top of operational changes that might require modifying a security group. Rounding out the value proposition is a monitoring console for tracking related networking issues such as traffic bottlenecks and packet dropping. According to VMware., the startup’s tool is capable of speeding up troubleshooting by up to 90 percent in some scenarios.

The virtualization giant plans on integrating the software into its vRealize Suite to complement the server and storage automation capabilities in the bundle. Providing the ability to manage all three major components of the IT stack through the same platform should make it considerably easier for VMware to win over new customers. And the integration will likely also be welcomed by organizations like Columbia Sportswear Co. that already use Akrin’s tool in their NSX environments.

VMware didn’t say how much it’s paying for the startup, but it did provide some information on the organizational aspect of the acquisition.  The Akrin team will join the company’s Cloud Management Business Unit and collaborate with its networking division to deliver new automation capabilities for NSX.

Image via Geralt