VMware bought Intrinsic, an application runtime security startup, in its sixth acquisition in three months. The deal adds serverless security to VMware’s rapidly growing cloud portfolio.

“VMware has acquired the technology and team behind Intrinsic,” a VMware spokesperson told SDxCentral. “This acquisition brings us unique expertise and technology as we look to expand our VMware AppDefense platform into the public cloud.”

AppDefense was VMware’s first security product, unveiled at the annual VMworld event in 2017. It initially supported applications running on vSphere-based virtualized and cloud environments. Last year it added container security for Kubernetes, Docker, RedHat OpenShift, and PKS workloads running across virtual machines, bare metal servers, and cloud platforms.

Now that it’s bought Intrinsic, VMware will be able to secure serverless functions on Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and Google Cloud.

The companies didn’t disclose terms of the deal.

Intrinsic, founded in 2015, is based in San Francisco and provides application runtime security technology for Node.js, an open-source JavaScript run-time environment. Instead of protecting applications by monitoring app behavior, it limits an application’s privileges to only what it is supposed to do and blocks all privileged operations that are not whitelisted by security policies.

The technology supports serverless platforms including AWS Lambda, Azure Functions, and Google Cloud Functions.

The acquisition advances VMware’s cloud agnostic approach — the virtualization vendor partners with AWS, Azure, Google, IBM, and some 4,000 smaller cloud services providers. It also pushes VMware further into emerging technologies like containers and serverless.

“It’s a good move since Intrinsic should significantly expand VMware’s serverless offerings and also complements the company’s cloud strategy and portfolio,” said Charles King, president and principal analyst at Pund-IT. “Intrinsic’s integration with AWS, Azure, and Google Cloud make it an especially valuable commodity that also fits into VMware’s agnostic approach to public cloud platforms.”

In addition to eyeing a Pivotal buy, which would bring that VMware’s sister company’s cloud-native and container platform in house, VMware bought Bitnami in May. Bitnami provides application packaging targeted at container and Kubernetes environments. And late last year it paid  $550 million for Kubernetes-focused startup Heptio.

Late last week VMware announced plans to buy Veriflow, a network verification startup. Last month it acquired a pair of artificial intelligence startups: Uhana and Bitfusion. And in June, the vendor reached a deal to acquire Avi Networks, a software company that provides multi-cloud application delivery services.

The virtualization giant’s massive buying spree is all happening in the lead up to VMworld, which takes place next week in San Francisco.

“Since Pat Gelsinger became VMware’s CEO, he’s been on a mission to grow the company’s core businesses while exploring and expanding into new territories,” King said. “Given his success to date, it'll be fascinating to see Gelsinger’s next acquisition target.”