As reported by endless news sources upcoming VMware IPO is expected as one of the biggest of last years (possibly the most interesting after Google one).
Understanding company strategy and near-term directions is critical to realize value of this investment.
For this reason virtualization.info summarized all declared and still-to-be-announced informations about virtualization market leader:
- VMware is working to extend its current market share on several areas, preparing to release VMware Server 2.0, its free server virtualization product, and possibly working with Apple to support Mac OS X in virtual machines.
- At the same time VMware is actively working to radically extends features of its virtualization platforms, introducing a new hardware appliance form factor (in partnership with Dell, IBM, HP and other OEMs), allowing 3rd parties virtual switches (in partnership with Cisco and other network vendors), and introducing support for next generation technologies (like Nested Page Tables, InfiniBand and N_Port ID Virtualization).
- But most of all VMware is extending its domain, moving away from just providing virtualization platforms (for enterprise and desktop customers).
In particular the company will address following virtualization segments: hosted desktops (with Propero acquisition), virtual machines patching (with new Updated Manager 1.0) and securing (with Determina acquisition), disaster recovery (with an unnamed upcoming solution), and capacity planning (with integration in VirtualCenter of Converter and Capacity Planner).These efforts will add to existing ones in automated provisioning (with Lab Manager product) and endpoint security (with ACE product).
On the longer term VMware may reach wider audience, porting its hypervisor to non-x86 architectures, including mobile devices.
All exposed moves so far also lead to think VMware will continue to address all datacenter maintenance aspects (security on top), until the company will be ready to deliver an omni-comprehensive datacenter automation suite (to be built from scratch or more likely obtained through an acquisition).
- While VMware is working to innovate and extend, it has to compete on endless fronts:
- On enterprise platform segment against Microsoft (with upcoming hypervisor codenamed Viridian), XenSource (with just released XenEnterprise 4.0), Virtual Iron and Parallels (with upcoming hypervisor Server).
- On physical to virtual (P2V) migration segment against PlateSpin, LeoStream (both partners).
- On hosted desktops segment against Provision Networks, Dunes (both partners).
- On automated provisioning (aka virtual lab automation) segment against Surgient and VMLogix (both partners).
To have a better picture of virtualization market IPO investors may want to see virtualization.info industry analysis tools: the Industry Challenges report, describing which technology issues virtualization adopters are facing and which companies are working to address them, and the Industry Predictions, collecting all virtualization market forecasts released by major analysis firms since 2003.
VMware IPO price is set to $27-29 and is expected to start August 14.
The day before VMware IPO EMC gained over 7% in stock exchange (and continue to rise during after-hours trade).