VMware first quarter revenue up by 69 percent

According to the report, VMware Q1Y08 revenues reached US$438 million, an increase of 69 percent compared to the first quarter of 2007. Diane Greene, president and chief executive officer of VMware, stated that greater understanding of the benefits of virtualisation has accelerated demand for server virtualisation products.

“We are seeing customers progress more rapidly through the virtualisation adoption path; many are now moving right into a VMware-based architecture so that they can pool their resources, deliver capacity on demand, and also get an insurance policy for business continuity and disaster recovery,” she said.

Greene commented on the importance of a strong partner channel to drive VMware technologies and claimed the vendor was continually developing its distribution model.

“Our strategy to continually deliver superb quality and market-expanding solutions well ahead of the competition is working and we’re advantaging our lead with our well developed multi-tier partner distribution model,” said Greene.

In a report by Gartner, the analyst firm predicted virtualisation will be the highest-impact trend changing infrastructure and operations through to 2012. The assertion is based on the understanding that server virtualisation acts as a tool to unlock the underutilised capacity of existing servers. Analysts further predict that over four million virtual machines will be installed on x86 servers by 2009.

Thomas J. Bittman, analyst at Gartner said: “The market ... is only six or seven percent addressed at this point. There’s a lot of room for growth.”