EMC Corp. President and CEO, Joe Tucci finally answer the great question.
Quoting from CRN:
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CRN: Why VMware? What was the rationale behind the acquisition of VMware?
Tucci: I think, basically, and everybody uses this word, utility computing. A lot of [utility computing is] around how you virtualize your storage, your network, and your server assets. Over time, it’s clear to me that, at least for storage and servers, that these decisions have to be very coordinated. This technology has to work together. And when you look around at who had the best virtualization software out there, it was clear to me for servers it was VMware. For storage, it was EMC.
This is tricky now, but I’m dedicated to it, and it’s important to your reader base, in the case of VMware I’m absolutely dedicated to let our server partners use that same technology, even if it competes against me.
So IBM is free to take VMware server virtualization technology and combine it with their storage virtualization technology and have a competing offering. That’s part of the rules of being open. But I will certainly look for offerings to do that myself, also.
CRN: If that’s the case, then why acquire VMware? If it’s something that’s going to be completely open, what’s the advantage to EMC?
Tucci: We’ll make money on it. We told the world that VMware did slightly less than $100 million last year, and we said that we could double that. In the first quarter, it did $39 million in revenue, which led everybody to say, ‘Yeah, I guess they can do that.’ A $200 million software business is a pretty valuable commodity. It broadens our horizons.
Umm…Tucci really seems don’t know what to do with VMware technologies at today…