VMware bolstering mobile device management tools with Immidio buy
Context & Ripple Effects
The Immidio deal slots into an unusually acquisitive stretch for VMware's end-user computing arm. A day earlier the company laid out its infrastructure-side plans with the vSphere 6 roadmap and Nvidia collaboration, and eight months later it would follow this buy by acquiring email and task management startup Boxer to merge with AirWatch — its mobile device management platform.
First-order effects
- AirWatch customers gain user-environment management capabilities from Immidio's technology, deepening what VMware can bundle into its mobile management offering without a separate vendor relationship.
- Immidio's team and product fold under VMware's EUC group, removing an independent option for enterprises evaluating Windows user-profile tooling.
Second-order effects
- The Boxer-AirWatch merger that followed shows the pattern this buy set: VMware assembling mobile workspace pieces through tuck-ins rather than partnerships, pressuring rivals like Microsoft to match with integrated suites of their own.
- By 2018 VMware was still extending the same stack externally, partnering with Okta on secure log-ins for mobile security offerings — evidence that acquired components alone weren't enough to complete the identity story.
Third-order effects
- If the string of acquisitions — Immidio, then Boxer-AirWatch, later Apteligent and Avi Networks — is the template, VMware consolidates around being a one-stop platform vendor across desktop-to-cloud layers rather than a point-product hypervisor company.
The trend: Enterprise mobility management is consolidating as VMware buys its way from hypervisor vendor toward an integrated digital workspace platform, one tuck-in at a time.