Carbon Black’s uncertain future following the closing of Broadcom’s $69 billion acquisition of VMware in November is now settled, with the security software business merging with Symantec to form Broadcom’s new Enterprise Security Group.

Broadcom will make “significant investments in both brands” and offer both Carbon Black and Symantec product portfolios through the new business unit, according to Rob Greer, vice president and general manager of the Enterprise Security Group.

“Symantec’s portfolio, with some of the best security technology and research in the world, concentrates on data and network protection, while Carbon Black’s complimentary portfolio specializes in both endpoint detection and response (EDR) and application control,” Greer wrote this month in a blog post about the decision to create the security unit. “Bringing both network and data telemetry to Carbon Black will enable greater visibility and control for our joint customers.”

He added that the combination of the two will ensure that enterprises will “continue to receive the best service with more dedicated resources and focused support than ever before.”

VMware Quickly Adds to Broadcom’s Financials

The creation of the new security business unit was among the highlights of Broadcom’s latest quarterly financial report this week, which illustrated the boost VMware is having on the IT giant’s bottom line. According to Broadcom, revenue when combining both Broadcom and VMware numbers jumped 34% year-over-year, to almost $12 billion. Without VMware, revenues still would have increased 11%.

“Our acquisition of VMware is accelerating revenue growth in our infrastructure software segment, as customers deploy VMware Cloud Foundation,” Broadcom President and CEO Hock Tan said in a statement.

Carbon Black Finds a Home

The creation of the security business unit ended a rollercoaster ride for Carbon Black, which VMware bought Carbon Black for $2.1 billion in 2019. VMware used the acquisition to create a new security business unit, with Carbon Black being foundational to the virtualization giant’s security offerings.

However, less than two weeks after acquiring VMware last year, Broadcom said it planned to divest both the Carbon Black business as well as VMware’s End-User Computing (EUC) unit – which Broadcom referred to as “non-core businesses – a move made so swiftly that it likely was in the works well before the deal was finalized, Forrester Research analysts wrote at the time.

They wrote in another blog post before the deal closed that there were no guarantees that Broadcom would keep Carbon Black in the fold. The unit offered workload protection tools for hybrid cloud deployments and cloud migrations and on the endpoint side of things, but there are gaps in its offerings.

“Carbon Black will complement [Symantec’s] capabilities,” they wrote. “Like Symantec, however, Carbon Black has fallen behind its competitors on the detection and response side in recent years, leaving Broadcom with the major hurdle of competitive parity on both sides of the coin.”

A Wild Ride

For a while, it seemed like Carbon Black was on its way out. Soon after the acquisition, it was separated from VMware and became an autonomous business unit. Later, investment firm KKR agreed to buy both VMware’s EUC business and Carbon Black for almost $4 billion. However, Broadcom finalized the $3.8 billion deal last month, but Carbon Black wasn’t part of it, creating even more speculation about the business unit’s future.

Now the future has been determined. According to Greer, the first step will be investing in R&D to improve and extend the live of products being used both on premises and in hybrid clouds. He pointed to the complementary nature of the product lines and the combined value they’ll offer enterprises.

“For example, Symantec has a data center security product to protect traditional workloads in the data center,” Greer wrote. “Carbon Black has a complementary solution. With access to these two technology sets, defenders will be even better equipped to protect their infrastructures.”

Investments in Carbon Black and Symantec

Broadcom also will make investments in engineering, he wrote. Both Carbon Black and Symantec have engineering sites in the India and while Broadcom has plans to converge them, the company doesn’t have plans to cut jobs. In addition, Broadcom will put money into support and R&D for both brands, including “retaining key technical and product leaders.”

However, a posting on LinkedIn by Jason Rolleston, the former general manager at Carbon Black who know is chief product officer for Broadcom’s enterprise security group, seemed to indicate that job cuts were on the way for Carbon Black employees.

After summarizing what Broadcom is doing with both Carbon Black and Symantec, Rolleston thanked Carbon Black employees for their work over the past few years.

“I can’t say enough about their talent, energy, commitment, teamwork, and resilience,” he wrote. “It was an absolute honor and a privilege to lead such an amazing team. If you have a chance to hire any of the folks that are not continuing with us on this journey, do it in a heartbeat.”