Virtualization and cloud computing software giant VMware announced that they have made plans to acquire Veriflow. The virtualization software company broke the news late August this year in a blog post on their official website.

VMware's acquisition of Veriflow is part of its plan to strengthen its position as a network management tool provider. Veriflow's acquisition will help enhance VMware's expertise in network monitoring, troubleshooting, and verification.

Established in 2013, Veriflow is a provider of network monitoring software that allows for IT teams in various businesses to operate, analyze, and create robust networks.

Veriflow's network monitoring software allows businesses requiring massive networks to closely monitor them from end to end. Network monitoring on such a large scale prevents any disruption to the deliverables businesses need to do on a daily basis.

Smaller-scale enterprises can also take advantage of similar network monitoring software for a fraction of the cost.

Having a network monitoring software provider under their portfolio will allow VMware to improve their existing service offerings. Given VMware's specialization in virtualization and cloud computing software, the acquisition of Veriflow and their expertise will help VMware by strengthening its capabilities. In the future, they intend to reduce network outages and shorten maintenance turnaround times.

VMware plans to integrate Veriflow into one of its enterprise management applications called vRealize Network Insight. vRealize Network Insight is one of VMware's security planning and network visibility tools. Veriflow's integration with this tool will improve vRealize Network Insight's ability to deliver a more secure network for cloud-based or virtual infrastructures.

The acquisition of Veriflow by VMware comes after they had already acquired the EMC Service Assurance Suite in 2018, as well as the more recent acquisition of Uhana. VMware acquired the technology and team behind the EMC Service Assurance Suite as a way to optimize their telco network functions virtualization portfolio: the host of applications and tools used by communications service providers in their large-scale operations.

The acquisition of Uhana by VMware is part of VMware's effort to strengthen their hold on artificial intelligence and deep learning in networking and virtualization applications. To be more specific, Uhana's acquisition further deepens VMware's venture into carrier mobile networks and applications.

VMware has made plans to integrate Uhana into a few of their application suites, namely VMware Telco Cloud and VMware Edge Cloud. These two portfolios will help carrier mobile networks switch to 4G and 5G networks that are virtualized and programmable, and improve support for rising technologies in virtual reality, augmented reality, and cloud based gaming.

These acquisitions made by VMware seem like a form of expensive retail therapy for the virtualization and cloud computing company. Apart from the acquisition of Veriflow, EMC Service Assurance Suite, and Uhana, VMware has also bought Avi Networks, a company known for its involvement in virtualized application delivery controllers. The buy was officially completed on June 2019. And in a buy that was completed just last month, VMware also acquired Bitfusion.

Bitfusion gained notoriety in the tech industry for their development of a virtualized environment that further increases the operational capacity of graphics processor units (GPUs). Bitfusion's technologies allow various GPUs to share their computing capabilities through the use of a virtual network, leading to better utilization and efficiency of these GPUs.

These innovations made by Bitfusion are developments that VMware hopes to integrate into their applications and suites.

This string of latest acquisitions has also made its way to Pivotal Software. Pivotal Software and VMware have a bit of shared history. Both Pivotal Software and VMware both have a large chunk of their shares owned by Dell; Dell currently owns 70 percent of Pivotal's shares, while 82 percent of VMware is owned by Dell. Now, VMware is in talks to acquire Pivotal Software.

To add to this close relationship, VMware also owns stock of Pivotal Software and sells Pivotal Software's services as well. This latest acquisition plan will see VMware acquiring all outstanding shares of Pivotal by $15 per share; the news has seen Pivotal's shares go up in the stock market to 66 percent.

VMware is primarily known for its expertise in enterprise networking, ever since the inception of its first product VMware Workstation back in 1999. Now that the software company has established itself among their many peers in the enterprise networking industry, their latest acquisitions appear to dictate an attempt to break into the telecommunications industry.

While it doesn't seem like VMware will be creating its own carrier mobile network, the company's recent deals do make it seem as if preparations are being made to market their service to carrier mobile networks and mobilize the virtualization of both their public and private cloud systems thereby solidifying their status as a virtual network powerhouse.

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