VMware buys CloudVolumes, continuing its diversification push

VMware has acquired CloudVolumes, a startup whose technology helps companies provide complex applications to their employees quickly and easily.

Word of the acquisition came in a blog post today by CloudVolumes senior vice president and chief product officer Harry Labana. Although Labana didn’t disclose terms of the deal, he said that VMware will announce more details on the implications of the deal during its VMworld conference next week.

The deal could help VMware better articulate the value of its software for desktop virtualization, which packages up the desktop experiences and legacy applications that employees use in such a way that everything can be run securely from devices other than corporate computers, even outside company offices. That can happen as a result of a desktop operating system like Windows running inside a virtual machine on a company server.

VMware pioneered virtualization technology — which enables multiple applications to run inside virtual machines on top of physical servers — more than a decade ago, and it still brings in much of the company’s revenue. But VMware has striven to sell additional types of enterprise software and expand its portfolio. The publicly traded company has made acquisitions in recent years to add offerings in the areas of storage and networking, as well as in desktop virtualization.

VMware ought to take such steps as open-source and Microsoft virtualization software continue to take hold, along with the rise of emerging technology for running multiple applications on physical servers like Docker.

Now VMware’s virtual desktop assets stand to get stronger as they can take advantage of potential cost savings as a result of CloudVolumes’ more efficient use of computing resources.

CloudVolumes’ architecture “significantly reduces the infrastructure overhead and simplifies application lifecycle management,” Labana wrote in today’s blog post.

In a sense, we should have seen this acquisition coming. CloudVolumes has been a VMware partner in the past, and VMware has played up the startup’s capabilities and said it complements VMware’s ThinApp software for virtualizing applications for end users.

CloudVolumes can also quickly grab more server capacity for applications when demand increases. It works for VMware’s widely used ESX hypervisor software for creating virtual machines, and supports Microsoft’s competing Hyper-V hypervisor. Support for public clouds like market-leading Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure were on the way, according to the company’s website.

Based in Santa Clara, Calif., CloudVolumes disclosed in July 2013 that it had raised $2.1 million in funding. Vish Mishra, a venture director at Clearstone Venture Partners, sits on the startup’s board.

Matthew Conover and Matthieu Suiche first started working on the CloudVolumes software in 2011.