Omnissa-CrowdStrike union reunites management and security
Organizations have growing security and management needs, so partnerships between vendors such as the Omnissa-CrowdStrike partnership provide necessary synergy for IT staff.
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Published: 28 Oct 2024
Omnissa -- formerly VMware's end-user computing division -- and CrowdStrike just announced a partnership that will help their customers secure both physical and virtual desktops.
While the press release didn't focus on the details of the integration, the idea that Omnissa and CrowdStrike are working together reinforces a trend that's been growing for a few years: the convergence of endpoint management and endpoint security, with a splash of virtual desktops thrown in for good measure.
Many vendors are realizing this and working to relieve it in some way. Microsoft has been bolstering Intune while adding value to its E5 subscribers. Tanium has been building out its endpoint management and incident response capabilities, as well as its partnerships with security platforms. And CrowdStrike has also partnered with companies such as NinjaOne and Adaptiva, both of which presented in the CrowdStrike booth at RSA Conference last year about this very topic.
To list all the vendors and collaborations would get long and exhausting but suffice it to say that there is a lot of activity here, and for good reason.
The proliferation and overlap of security and endpoint management tools
A few years ago, my first research project at TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group focused on this intersection of endpoint management and security, and it identified a cesspool of sprawl and other nastiness stemming -- I believe -- from reactive support and knee-jerk reactions.
For example, the research showed two-thirds of organizations had deployed more than 10 tools for endpoint management and security. And half of those organizations had more than 15 tools -- a number that, from conversations with IT decision-makers, seems low.
Despite this, 34% of organizations noted they'd had multiple cyberattacks due to unmanaged, unknown or poorly managed endpoints. Another 43% said they'd had just one attack for those reasons.
The real takeaway, though, is organizations with more tools were also more likely to have experienced several cyberattacks.
There is so much sprawl with endpoint form factors and OSes, security tools and management tools that the old ways of having separate teams, tools and processes for endpoint management and endpoint security are simply not working.
In a nutshell, this is the reason for the intersection of endpoint management and security. There is so much sprawl with endpoint form factors and OSes, security tools and management tools that the old ways of having separate teams, tools and processes for endpoint management and endpoint security are simply not working.
To that end, organizations have shown an overwhelming interest in consolidating these teams, tools and processes, which brings us back to the Omnissa-CrowdStrike announcement -- and other similar partnerships.
I'm happy to see this trend continuing, and I'm glad Omnissa has finally found a security tool it can integrate, which always seemed troublesome back in the VMware days with Carbon Black. While I don't think consolidating endpoint management and security will be easy, partnerships like this can certainly go a long way to help organizations on that path, and I'm eager to learn more about the integration with both Workspace One and Horizon.
This topic comes up so often that I'm planning on fielding some follow-up research on it. I'm hoping to get updated information on the data points mentioned here, while also getting deeper into topics, such as what tools are used, what outcomes have been achieved, the challenges of consolidation and how they were overcome, and how approaches to endpoint management and security have evolved. I'm excited to get that project going and to share the results.
Gabe Knuth is the senior end-user computing analyst for TechTarget's Enterprise Strategy Group.
Enterprise Strategy Group is a division of TechTarget. Its analysts have business relationships with technology vendors.
