Combined Dell-EMC-VMware To Deliver Integrated Endpoint Security Solutions

Dell will deliver a new platform that combines its existing endpoint security offerings with those from its newly acquired EMC and its RSA and VMware AirWatch business. The new endpoint security and management portfolio is the first major new offering resulting from Dell's $67 billion acquisition of EMC, which closed six weeks ago, representing the largest-ever merger of two IT infrastructure providers.

The new security offering is one of a significant number of announcements announced at Dell EMC World, a two-day gathering in Austin, Texas that kicked off this morning.

Like any large deal, many fail to see its potential benefits, but Michael Dell, the company's founder and chairman, showed no doubt during the opening keynote that the newly combined company will not only succeed but thrive.

"Today Dell is the largest enterprise systems company in the entire world," he said. Among the many new offerings released and in the pipelines revealed today, Dell pointed to the benefits of coming together to address the mounting cyberattacks and threats.

"Every time I sit down with our colleagues with RSA or SecureWorks and they take us through not what happened in the last quarter but just this week, it's very scary," Dell said during a press conference following the keynote session. "The nature of the attacks and the sophistication of the attacks is increasing."

The new suite will come out of Dell's client solutions group, which includes its PC offerings. "You have a package from us that meets the changing needs of the workforce," said Jeff Clarke, vice chairman of operations and president, client solutions group, during the keynote session announcing the new suite. "We now have the ability for endpoint security that's unmatched in the market."

Initially Dell will offer the new portfolio as a bundled suite, Clarke said, and over time the various products will interoperate with each other. Ultimately Dell will offer a single management console for the entire offering, Clarke said.

The company is looking at this platform as three key components: Identity and authentication, data protection and unified endpoint management. The bundle will include:

• Dell Data Protection-Endpoint Security Suite, which provides authentication, file-based encryption and advanced threat protection
• MozyEnterprise and MozyPro, the company's cloud-based backup and recovery, file sync and encryption offering.
• RSA SecurID Access, the multifactor, single sign-on authentication solution.
• RSA NetWitness Endpoint, a tool designed to utilize behavioral analytics and machine learning to provide more rapid remediation to advanced threats.
• VMware AirWatch, the company's mobile device management offering. With this release Dell said organizations can use Dell Data Protection with AirWatch to report on activity for compliance.

Dell believes companies are looking to streamline the number of security solutions in their organizations. Technology Business Research's new benchmark survey showed that large companies typically have 50 security products and smaller organizations have 10. TBR's latest research report shows companies would like to get that number down to 45 and 8, respectively. This is the second year in a row, customers are spending more of their new budgets on endpoint security than any other segment, said TBR Analyst Jane Wright, during a panel session at DellEMCWorld yesterday that she moderated.

"Customers are telling us that they're spending more money than ever on endpoint security," Wright said. "And it's not just that they want to protect those nice pretty endpoints, they're looking to protect the data that's on those endpoints or passing through those endpoints at any given time."

The increased spend isn't just on products Wright added. "They are dedicating more people and creating more policies and procedures and testing, than ever before."

Posted by Jeffrey Schwartz on 10/19/2016 at 12:48 PM