VMware acquisitions: signal of a full stack evolution?

Aug 31, 2010 by Sinclair Schuller

During the VMworld keynote today, VMware announced that it was acquiring Integrien and TriCipher. Clearly, M&A activity is a good indicator that the acquirer is pursuing change and hoping to achieve specific strategic goals, but what they buy is always an interesting indicator of corporate direction.

VMware, not too long ago, picked up SpringSource and associated technologies, painting a clear Java stack play. But looking at Integrien and TriCipher, we’re starting to see real building blocks around application level services that are well beyond the bounds of a VM. This is all extremely interesting; it points to the notion that VMware is evolving to see the application layer as the key battleground of the future. I know it seems obvious, but looking at all the moving parts, it’s always amazing to see things like this come together. I personally believe that we’ll see full blown stack analogs in the cloud, along with best of breed semantics, creating a true set of “cloud stacks” that offer huge amounts of value to the application tier, and not just focus on solving infrastructure level problems (which is what a huge amount of cloud tech as focused on to date. Not all, but a large amount)

If you were VMware, what other application level services an components would you see as critical in building a complete stack offering?  At what point would the VMware stack evolve into something unique rather than just the sum of its parts?