In 2019, VMware Inc. used the acquisition of Carbon Black Inc. to address what its chief executive officer characterized as “broken” security. Today, VMware added a couple of new tools to the repair shop.

The company announced that it would acquire Kubernetes security vendor Octarine Inc. in a move designed to provide customers with improved visibility into cloud-native environments. Octarine’s technology will be embedded into the VMware Carbon Black Cloud.

“We’ve been looking at container security for a long time,” said Sanjay Poonen (pictured), chief operating officer at VMware, who noted that container security had been the number one request from the firm’s customers. “If we add container security into this, we really distinguish ourselves further from the traditional endpoint players. We will build that platform into the technology that VMware has under the Carbon Black Cloud, and we will deliver that this year.”

Poonen spoke with John Furrier, host of theCUBE, SiliconANGLE Media’s livestreaming studio, during the AWS Summit Online event. They discussed a new security-focused alliance with major industry players, VMware’s key priorities and the company’s ongoing partnership with Amazon Web Services Inc. (* Disclosure below.)

Embracing endpoint security

In addition to the acquisition of Octarine, VMware also announced it would launch a Next-Gen Security Operations Center Alliance, leveraging the combined efforts of other technology firms to improve visibility and remediation capabilities across a wide range of enterprise platforms.

Along with VMware, the Next-Gen SOC Alliance includes Splunk Inc., IBM Security, Google Cloud’s Chronicle, Exabeam Inc. and Sumo Logic Inc. The announced partners will integrate technologies into VMware’s Carbon Black Cloud.

“Five of the biggest security information and event management players are embracing VMware in endpoint security, saying that Carbon Black is who they want to work with,” Poonen said. “You’re going to see us investing more in security. It’s an important priority for the company.”

Trifecta of products

VMware’s focus on intrinsic security is one of the five key priorities for VMware, according to Poonen. The others include enabling multicloud for customers, application modernization, building out the entire network stack and leveraging Workspace ONE, VMware’s digital platform for app management on any device.

Workspace ONE has been particularly significant for VMware over the past several weeks as maintaining business continuity became a critical issue in the face of a global pandemic.

“People wanted a virtual desktop managed easily,” Poonen said. “The trifecta of Workspace ONE, Carbon Black and VeloCloud began to see even more interest. That’s an example of where you have a general strategy but you apply it to take action in the midst of a crisis.”

One year ago, VMware and AWS enhanced a growing relationship with the news that customers could purchase VMware Cloud on AWS directly through the public cloud provider. That relationship appears to be just as strong in 2020.

“VMware is always able to be a bigger company if we stand on the shoulders of bigger giants,” Poonen said. “Dell has been a really strong partner with us on private cloud, and having Amazon now in the public cloud has been seminal. We have 70 million virtual machines running on-premises. If customers are looking to move those workloads to Amazon, the best place for that is VMware Cloud on AWS.”

Here’s the complete video interview, part of SiliconANGLE’s and theCUBE’s coverage of the AWS Summit Online event. (* Disclosure: TheCUBE is a paid media partner for the AWS Summit Online event. Neither Amazon Web Services, the sponsor for theCUBE’s event coverage, nor other sponsors have editorial control over content on theCUBE or SiliconANGLE.)

Photo: SiliconANGLE