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This is the Dell security team. We have you surrounded. Come out with a purchase order
RSA/VMware/Dell pincer movement to sell all the cybers
Security buyers: Dell's got you surrounded. Come out with a purchase order, buy security software, and we can bring this to a peaceful ending.
That appears to be the plan for integrating RSA and Dell, based on interviews The Register has conducted with RSA execs at the company's Asian conference in Singapore.
We wanted to know how RSA fits in to the new Dell for a couple of reasons. For starters, cloudfather Joe Tucci, who as EMC CEO acquired RSA, said in his last weeks that he didn't feel he got the best out of the company. Secondly. fellow Dell subsidiary VMware is about to launch its own security products, which maybe muddies the water a bit.
It turns out there's a plan. RSA CTO Zulfikar Ramzan told us that the company's strength has long been selling to security pros and managers – either frontline grunts or chief information security officers (CISOs). RSA plans to keep doing that.
The company's also keen on the notion that CISOs simply must get the attention of senior managers to make security a business issue focussed on directing investments to areas of highest risk. RSA's already nudged its products in and sales efforts in that direction.
VMware, Ramzan said, has done best selling to infrastructure people so when it gets its security product to market or talks up NSX microsegmentation it won't be underfoot when RSA people go out to sell.
RSA and VMware have also started collaborating: even though virtzilla's AirWatch has authentication and single-sign-on tech, RSA's SecureID has been integrated with VMware's Workspace One.
Which means Dell has a way in through security pros, infrastructure wonks, plus whoever it is considers end-user experience and/or mobility.
Dell Technologies itself gets the suits.
RSA president Rohit Ghai told us that one element of the Dell Technologies masterplan is helping CIOs to reduce the number of suppliers with which they need to engage. Which means lots of fries-with-that opportunities for Dell people when they sell endpoints, as they can use the RSA endpoint security offerings. Or if Dell EMC people are selling tin, the hope is that they include RSA products in a wider discussion of how to make infrastructure appropriately resilient commensurate with the risk it represents.
“Dell is structured as a collaborative business to optimise opportunities,” Ghai told The Register.
So get used to the company optimising – and securing – you. ®