VMware bucks downturn in first quarter

Peter Dinham
Thursday, 23 April 2009 15:55

Business IT - Technology

VMware has stood up well against the economic tsunami sweeping the world with its revenues for the first quarter this year, compared to the same quarter in 2008, increasing by seven percent to US$470.3 million.

Releasing first quarter ’09 results today, VMware reported GAAP operating income for the quarter of US86.9 million which was a massive 80% increase on operating income in the first quarter last year. In addition, non-GAAP income for the quarter was US$121.0 million, an increase of 14% over the first quarter of 2008.

Of the total revenues there was a reasonably even split between the US market and VMware’s global business. The US market delivered US$244.01million, a first quarter increase of eight percent over the same quarter last year, while international revenues grew six percent to US$226.2 million compared to the first quarter in 2008.

Paul Maritz, president and chief executive officer of VMware said that in an environment where customers were reducing IT purchases in order to preserve cash, the company had “successfully managed costs while continuing to make strategic investments in our products.”

“We delivered solid results for the first quarter despite a very challenging economic climate. Customers continued to adopt the VMware platform as a strategic investment that delivers substantial cost savings and improved efficiency and flexibility for their business.”

Maritz said that just yesterday VMware had launched vSphere 4, which he claimed was the industry’s first operating system for building the internal cloud. 

According to Maritz, vSphere delivers “efficient, flexible and reliable IT as a service,” and he added, “leveraging vSphere 4, customers can take pragmatic steps to achieve cloud computing within their own IT environments.”
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