VMware Acquires MDM Provider AirWatch In £929m Deal

VMware is beefing up its mobile offering with the acquisition of enterprise mobility management (EMM) firm AirWatch for a total of $1.54 billion (£930m).

AirWatch offers mobile device management (MDM), mobile application management and mobile content management services, and has more than 10,000 customers and more than 1,600 employees based in nine global offices.

VMware will pay $1.175 billion (£710m) in cash and around $365 million (£220m) in instalment payments and stock options, and the deal is expected to conclude in the first quarter, after which Airwatch’s Atlanta headquarters will expand and become the head of VMware’s mobile operations.

VMware AirWatch acquisition

Pat Gelsinger, CEO of VMware, says the acquisition will form part of an expanded portfolio of mobility services that complement its existing offerings.

Mobile device management is becoming an increasingly competitive market, with a number of companies looking to take advantage as businesses become increasingly mobile. BlackBerry, Good Technology and Samsung are among those pitching to the enterprise, while Dell detailed its own offering for MDM – which it prefers to call “EMM” (enterprise mobility management) – at Dell World last month.

“AirWatch provides best-in-class, secure, enterprise-mobile management to thousands of businesses around the world,” siad Gelsinger. “With this acquisition VMware will add a foundational element to our end-user computing portfolio that will enable our customers to turbo-charge their mobile workforce without compromising security.”

New structure

Upon completion AirWatch CEO and founder John Marshall will join VMware’s end user computing group, while co-founder and Chairman Alan Dabbiere will head a new board which will report to Gelsinger.

“When we started AirWatch, we set out to help businesses succeed in the mobile explosion that was set to come. Now there are more than 2 billion smart phones and tablets in the world and more than half of those devices touch an enterprise,” adds Dabbiere. “By joining a proven innovator like VMware, we now have an opportunity to bring our leading-edge solutions to an even broader set of customers and partners to help them optimize for the mobile-cloud world.”

VMware is due to announce its results for the fourth quarter of 2013 next week and says it expects revenues to rise by 15 percent from last year, increasing to $1.48 billion.

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