VMware's Gelsinger: We 'May Be The Most Important Security Company'

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At The Channel Company's recent NexGen Cloud conference in San Diego, VMware CEO Pat Gelinsger praised innovative efforts from Palo Alto Networks, Check Point Software Technologies and Symantec, but he called his own company the "most important security company."

"Security has been a terrible situation. No part of IT spend has increased more rapidly over the last five years than security," Gelsinger said, citing that "the cost of breaches is the only thing that has increased more than the spend on security."

"We want to protect people, apps and data, but the only things that we can do is tie security to either devices, or to infrastructure," he explained. The "big guys" as well as hot startups have innovated tremendously in the security area, he added.

Gelsinger said what's missing in today’s security solutions is an architecture "that allows us to holistically bring a security solution to the marketplace."

"We fundamentally believe that the virtualization layer allows us to do that," he said.

The CEO pointed to virtualization’s ability to align services to apps and data, as well as users and data. Furthermore, the virtualization layer is ubiquitous. Gelsinger believes the architecture created by VMware will allow for a never-before-seen holistic approach to securing environments.

VMware has organized the VMware Security Engineering, Communications & Response group (vSECR), which develops initiatives for the architecture.

"We will not be the biggest security company, but we may be the most important security company," Gelsinger said.

PUBLISHED DEC. 14, 2015