EMC chief executive Joe Tucci told siliconrepublic.com that the storage giant has no intention of selling off virtualisation software company VMware.
Last week Tucci was in Cork to announce 50 new software research and development (R&D) jobs at the company’s Cork operation, as part of a €20m investment. EMC employs over 1,600 people in Ovens, Co Cork.
“Our plans for VMware will be to continue to run it as a majority-owned company of EMC. We don’t have any plans to sell our 85pc share in the company,” Tucci affirmed.
“It will continue to be an independent company and work in the most open, even-handed way possible with all other players in the IT landscape that choose to be part of this great technology. EMC will do nothing that advantages itself exclusively with this technology.”
Tucci said that he believes that VMware is right at the heart of the major technology changes shaping the enterprise and consumer IT world over the next decade.
“VMware is right at the nexus of three of the future high growth areas in IT. The data centres of the future are going to be virtualised data centres and over 90pc of hardware will have a virtualisation layer and then, of course, infrastructure services on top of that. Services that help you provide business continuity, security and VMware have 20 of them today.
“Another growth area is going to be cloud computing and the third area is going to be virtual desktop infrastructure and VMware technology plays very well there. When you look at where some of the macro trends for IT in the future will be, VMware is well positioned.”
While the world grapples with an economic downturn and a credit crunch, Tucci says the sector will achieve growth this year, albeit modest growth.
“I think IT spending globally in 2008 will be modestly up from 2007. Customers are investing in technology to help reduce costs. In our business, the underlying trends are server consolidation, storage consolidation and data centre consolidation, to save money and get quick return on investment.
“Smart companies that intend to be around are still investing in technology. While things have definitely slowed down and businesses are subject to more scrutiny, there’s still some growth out there on the global landscape,” Tucci told siliconrepublic.com.
By John Kennedy
