Broadcom's recent acquisition of VMware marks a significant turning point for Carbon Black, a key player in the cybersecurity market. It now operates as an autonomous business unit within Broadcom and no longer reports to VMware, Jason Rolleston, VP and GM of Carbon Black at Broadcom, told SDxCentral.

Carbon Black's journey began as a publicly traded security company offering a cloud-based endpoint platform. VMware acquired Carbon Black in 2019 for around $2.1 billion and put it under the vendor’s networking and security business group.

Following Broadcom closing its $69 billion acquisition of VMware last month, Rolleston announced Carbon Black became a standalone business unit, operating all core business functions in coordination with Broadcom, which allows it to gain a new level of independence and increase its focus to address cybersecurity demands.

“The biggest change for Carbon Black is our increased focus. We no longer report to or take our lead from VMware,” Rolleston told SDxCentral in an email. “We are now an independent business unit, which allows us to do things a bit differently and continue to align our business around addressing the unique demands of the cybersecurity market. We now have the flexibility to continue to drive innovation for the specific challenges our customers face with cybersecurity detection and response.”

“While we will report into Broadcom, we are responsible for our own success, which is an exciting proposition,” he added. “We were successful within VMware, and now our future is brighter than ever, as we focus on our customers' critical cybersecurity challenges without distraction.”

Rolleston was VP and GM of VMware Carbon Black since last December, and he took the role of VP and GM of Carbon Black under Broadcom following the acquisition.

Impacts on Carbon Black customers

Rolleston noted Carbon Black's autonomy is expected to bring clearer focus and enhanced solutions for its customers. “First and foremost, moving forward our customers will see much more clarity in our focus.”

“The role of CISO is hard and it’s only getting harder, especially when you consider the recent actions by the SEC, which is requiring increased transparency and accountability,” he said.

Carbon Black is aiming to help CISOs close their risk gap, which is “the growing distance between an organization’s status quo defenses and its exposure to directed attacks and the associated burden of meeting compliance and governance requirements,” Rolleston wrote in a blog post.

Additionally, the business unit will continue focusing on addressing the need for persistent visibility, data-driven context and flexible control in today’s threat landscape, he added.

“As I look to 2024, Carbon Black will be doubling down on our innovation in these areas, realigning our operations, solutions and programs to empower customers and partners to holistically address their current cybersecurity challenges,” Rolleston said.

Carbon Black sees VMware and Symantec as ‘potential strategic partners’

Prior to the Broadcom takeover, VMware once combined the Carbon Black business and the networking and security business group to form the Networking and Advanced Security business group (NASBG) under its ex-SVP Tom Gillis.

Earlier this year, VMware reorganized this Networking and Advanced Security business group following the departure of Gillis. The group was split and returned to two separate units — the Carbon Black and NSX businesses.

On the other hand, analysts noted Broadcom could potentially enter the single-vendor secure access service edge (SASE) market and boost its overall SASE market share and revenue by integrating Symantec, VMware SD-WAN and some of Carbon Black’s security capabilities.

“Broadcom could choose VMware (SD-WAN) and combine it with Symantec to go after the single-vendor opportunity,” Mauricio Sanchez, senior research director for enterprise networking and security market at Dell’Oro, told SDxCentral in an earlier interview.

However, for now, Broadcom hasn’t revealed any internal integration plans for Carbon Black.

“Within the Broadcom family, we view VMware and Symantec as potential strategic partners,” Rolleston said. “As always, we will do what’s right for our customers and our business. We will evaluate all opportunities, including integrations, when and where it makes the most sense for our customers.”

Future plans and challenges for Carbon Black

Looking ahead to 2024, Carbon Black plans to double down on its innovation efforts. This includes participating in more than 40 events, such as the RSAC 2024, according to Rolleston.

However, its fate remains unclear.

In November, before the deal closed, Broadcom CEO Hock Tan took to the stage at the VMware Explore Barcelona event and said it’s likely Broadcom could look to trim under-performing operations, specifically citing VMware’s Carbon Black cloud security business.

“I think trimming makes a lot of sense for Broadcom and making divestitures in terms of how can they improve profitability,” Demeule said.

Tracy Woo, senior analyst at Forrester Research, expressed concerns in an earlier interview with SDxCentral about Broadcom's focus on immediate profitability, which could potentially impact Carbon Black and VMware’s cloud-native Tanzu platform.

She added that VMware has attempted to shield Tanzu through its integration of Tanzu into its Aria multicloud management platform, while she has not heard a lot from VMware customers on its Carbon Black service.