Cloud infrastructure and virtualization company VMware plans to acquire software-defined data center (SDDC) security and operations firm Arkin Net.

The financial details of the deal were not disclosed, but the transaction is expected to close in Q2 2016.

VMWare HQ
VMware HQ – Wikimedia Commons/BrokenSphere

NSX drive

“Arkin is a great fit for VMware and its customers as we look to accelerate our growth businesses including cloud management and network virtualization,” Ajay Singh, VMware senior vice president and general manager, cloud management business unit, said.

Continuing: “With VMware NSX combined with Arkin and vRealize, VMware will deliver the security and operations management plane for the SDDC. Over time, Arkin will solidify vRealize Suite’s position as the industry’s most comprehensive Cloud Management Platform that delivers application-focused operations, NSX micro-segmentation at scale and cross-domain visibility and context across physical and logical infrastructure.”

Arkin’s co-founder and CEO Shiv Agarwal added: “Arkin and VMware have been great partners and we’re now excited to join the VMware family to take Arkin to the next level. Arkin delivers a new operations paradigm that has been built from the ground up for VMware NSX network virtualization and is fully aligned with the core NSX use cases of IT automation, security and application continuity.”

The Arkin platform makes VMWare’s NSX software-defined networking solutions easier to operate and faster to deploy via micro-segmentation planning, something that VMWare hopes to now add to its products. The virtualization giant plans for its vRealize Suite to have the ability to extend across the entire SDDC, including the VMware NSX network virtualization layer.

The two companies have already worked together on several projects, including for Columbia Sportswear and Nebraska Medicine.

John Spiegel of Columbia Sportswear, talked up the acquisition: “Operational visibility, which accounts for both hardware and software, is critical to how organizations succeed in using next-generation data center technologies. The combination of VMware NSX and Arkin provides us a tactical and strategic lens for managing our virtualized data center.”

While Nebraska Medicine’s Brian Lancaster said: “Arkin and VMware are strategic partners helping Nebraska Medicine deploy our next-generation NSX based software-defined data center.

“Arkin real-time flow analytics makes it extremely easy to implement micro-segmentation security. The visibility and troubleshooting capabilities that Arkin provides to our networking and operations teams enables us to more quickly and confidently scale our NSX deployment.”