VMware Q4 revenues rise to US$608 million

26 Jan 2010

Virtualisation and cloud-computing player VMware, which is owned by storage giant EMC, last night reported an 18pc rise in Q4 revenues which reached US$608 million.

Operating income for the fourth quarter was US$71 million, a decrease of 30pc from the fourth quarter of 2008.

Net income for the fourth quarter was US$56 million, or US$0.14 per diluted share, compared to US$111 million, or $0.29 per diluted share last year.

VMware has more than US$2.4 billion in cash and deferred revenue was US$1.3 billion, up 35pc and 52pc respectively.

Services revenues, which include software maintenance and professional services, were US$304 million for the fourth quarter, an increase of 52pc from the fourth quarter of 2008.

“The quarter’s strong performance, anchored by demand for vSphere, signals that virtualisation is a key technology for customers who need to save money today, yet invest in a strategy that is central to the emerging cloud-computing model,” said Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer.

“We believe that VMware is well positioned to help take our customers on this evolutionary path forward, and our strategy is to expand our portfolio to better serve our customers who are looking to remove complexity from IT.”

VMware’s Wall Street Journal 2009 Technology Innovation Award

In October 2009, VMware announced positive momentum for vSphere 4, the industry’s leading virtualisation platform, including now more than 800,000 customer downloads since it has been on the market in late May, and winning the prestigious Wall Street Journal 2009 Technology Innovation Award for software product of the year.

In November 2009, VMware announced the availability of VMware View 4, the industry’s only purpose-built desktop virtualisation solution, setting a new quality, cost and scale standard for desktop virtualisation environments. 

In November 2009, EMC and Cisco, along with VMware, introduced the Virtual Computing Environment coalition to help customers accelerate pervasive virtualisation and a transition to private cloud infrastructures.

In January 2010, VMware announced it had entered into an agreement to acquire Zimbra, a leading vendor of email and collaboration software, from Yahoo! Inc.

“We are pleased with our solid fourth-quarter results driven by pent-up customer demand and our successful upgrade promotion to Enterprise Plus,” said Mark Peek, chief financial officer.

“While the economy is slowly recovering, we have improved near-term visibility as customers move forward with their IT investments.  We are planning first-quarter revenues to be in the range of US$580 million and US$600 million, an increase of 23pc to 28pc from the first quarter 2009.

“We expect annual 2010 revenue to be in the range of US$2.45 billion and US$2.55 billion, an increase of 21pc to 26pc from 2009,” Peek said.

By John Kennedy

 

John Kennedy is a journalist who served as editor of Silicon Republic for 17 years

editorial@siliconrepublic.com