Immediately after the announcement of VMsafe APIs, McAfee published a supporting press release to confirm its commitment to the new VMware program.
Anyway the most interesting news contained in that statement is another: McAfee will offer a OEM version of VMware ESX Server 3i for some future products.
No other details are provided and it’s unclear how McAfee could use the hypervisor for its own purposes. Maybe the security player is considering to replicate the model already used by PlateSpin, which combined together its P2V migration technology PowerConvert and the VMware platform to deliver an out-of-the-box disaster recovery solution: Forge.
In any case McAfee seems to have plans for serious investments in the virtualization space and this may drive the challenge with its competitors in new directions.
Symantec is one of the first expected to answer. Considering its history of wild acquisitions (already including Altiris and its application virtualization platform SVS), it wouldn’t surprise much if the company would proceed with an acquisition to match McAfee efforts.