Bloomberg just published a rumor about the possible sale of VMware.
Their article doesn’t mention any potential buyer.
virtualization.info can confirm that this rumor is spreading since several months with a key additional detail: the potential buyer mentioned so far by multiple sources is Intel.
While it’s possible that this rumor is spreading just to artificially increase the VMW stock, if confirmed such acquisition may give VMware a unique competitive advantage, slipping the hypervisor directly onto the CPU, and may completely change the IT industry order, with new alliances and competitors.
In any case an acquisition isn’t like to happen before January 2009, when EMC will be able to do a tax-free distribution of shares.
Update: Obviously EMC denies the possibility to sell its VMware stake.
Second update: Two months later (July 7) RBC Capital Markets publicly embraces the idea that VMware may be sold in early 2009 and updates its EMC stock rating to outperform.
The result is a temporary performance boost of 4.5%