vmware

Diane Greene’s Potential Payout Nearly $50 Million USD

July 22, 2008 by Robin Wauters 1 Comment

Unless you’ve been living under a rock, you know Diane Greene was recently abruptly ousted from the top spot at the very company she co-founded, VMware.

Greene, 52, had been CEO of the company since she helped start it in 1998 along with 4 others, including husband and current Chief Scientist Mendel Rosenblum. Her salary, according to a July 2007 employment agreement, was $750,000. Her salary in 2007 was $583,333 and her total compensation for the year was $8.6 million.

Another interesting caveat: according to VMware’s proxy statement, Greene could be paid a bonus of $491,678 and her stock options may vest early, which could increase the value of her potential payout to $47.5 million or even more.

[Source: SF Business Times]

VMware

VMware (VMW): Second-Quarter 2008 Results (Updated)

July 22, 2008 by Robin Wauters 2 Comments

VMware reported its second-quarter 2008 results today, with an earnings conference call which was followed closely after the abrupt removal of Diane Greene two weeks ago (see our ‘the week after‘ post too for reference). Don’t feel too bad for her, we’ve just reported on her potential payout, which could be well over $50 million USD.

These are the results that were just announced, in bullet points:

Net income of $52.4 million, or 13 cents a share, compared with $34.2 million, or 10 cents a share, a year earlier.
Revenues for the second quarter were $456 million, an increase of 54% from the second quarter of 2007. Update: this is below Wall Street analysts expectations and estimates, who projected $458,6 to 460 million in revenue – (which the company also projected in April but revised later on). Shares going down.
GAAP operating income for the second quarter was $61 million, compared to $47 million for the same period last year.
Non-GAAP operating income was $112 million, an increase of 52% from the second quarter of 2007.
GAAP net income for the quarter was $52 million, or $0.13 per diluted share, compared to $34 million, or $0.10 per diluted share, for the second quarter of 2007.
Non-GAAP net income for the quarter was $92 million, or $0.23 per diluted share, compared to $52 million, or $0.16 per diluted share, for the second quarter of 2007.
Cash exceeded $1.5 billion and deferred revenue was $721 million as of June 30, 2008.

Second quarter U.S. revenues grew 43% to $240 million from the second quarter of 2007. International revenues grew 68% to $216 million from the second quarter of 2007 driven by strength in Europe and Australia.

Software license revenue grew 39% to $284 million from second quarter of 2007. Service revenues, which include support, subscription and professional services, were $172 million, an increase of 85% from the second quarter of 2007.

As for the financial outlook:

2008 revenues are targeted to grow approximately 42% to 45% compared to 2007. Update: this is rather modest.
Third quarter 2008 revenues are targeted to be within a range of approximately $462 to $468 million. Update: Analysts were projecting revenue of $497.3 million
Third quarter GAAP operating margin is targeted to be between 11% and 13%. This guidance includes stock-based compensation, employer payroll tax on employee stock transactions, amortization of intangible assets and capitalized software development costs which are targeted at 9% of projected revenue.

VMware is hosted a conference call today reviewing its results and discussing its financial outlook. The call was scheduled to begin at 2:00 p.m. PT/ 5:00 p.m. ET.

A noteworthy statement from Paul Maritz in the call was also the fact that VMware intends to make VMware ESXi completely free. The free version, officially called ESXi 3.5, will be available to download starting July 28. Maritz believes this approach to virtualization will help bring more customers into the VMware fold and make virtualization technology ubiquitous.

VMware

British Library Consolidates Wealth of Digital Data With Virtualization

July 22, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

—

The UK’s national library, the infamous British Library, is using a new Ethernet networking infrastructure as the basis for a number of projects to digitize huge amounts of content and to consolidate its data center using virtualization.

Stephen Lilgert, the British Library’s head of infrastructure strategy and development told IT PRO the library is celebrating its tenth anniversary at its St Pancras facility and needed to update its existing networking technology in support of a number of initiatives.

The Library now uses equipment from Foundry Networks (which coincidentally, as announced today, was acquired by Brocade) to meet demands in increased networking capacity for a wide range of digital projects, from digitizing current and historical library collections and materials, to enabling virtualization in order to control costs through better use of server infrastructure.

It is using the latest BigIron RX-8 Layer 2/3 backbone switches and FastIron Edge X Series Power over Ethernet (PoE) ready switches to augment its existing Foundry equipment already installed at its Boston Spa and St Pancras sites.

Lilgert also said VMware technology, used for 18 months now, has already helped reduce the server farm by 80 machines.

“That amounts to £14,000 a year in power, not to mention £4,000 in air-conditioning and cooling,” he said. “We’re looking to reduce our large physical server infrastructure through a combination of consolidation and virtualisation. We are running a clustered, high-availability VMware infrastructure working on the basis of around 25 virtual servers sitting on one physical host. Bandwidth, therefore, needs to be increased at the distribution layer hence the deployment of gigabit Ethernet FastIron Edge X Series switches in our computer rooms.”

[Source: IT Pro]

Nebulas Virtualise Appoints New CEO, Partners With VMware, PlateSpin and Vizioncore

July 22, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

—

Nebulas Virtualise, a provider of virtualization solutions and part of the Nebulas Solutions Group, has appointed Mike Young to head the division and announced a series of new technology partnerships, including VMware, PlateSpin (Novell) and Vizioncore.

According to the company, Mike Young, who has been appointed to head Nebulas Virtualise, is a virtualization specialist with over 20 years’ experience in managing complex IT projects. He will lead the technical team and will be involved at all stages of client projects. Before joining the company, Young worked at System Group Integration (SGI) where he was responsible for implementing large scale VMware and Microsoft solutions.

The new partnerships with VMware, PlateSpin and Vizioncore are expected to ensure that the company can offer customers the latest virtualization solutions. Nebulas Virtualise will market a complete service from initial consultancy, cost and return on investment analysis, infrastructure planning and migration and management of virtualized environments. The financial details of the partnerships were not disclosed.

[Source: TradingMarkets]

3PAR Launches Thin Copy Desktop for VMware VDI

July 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

3PAR announced today 3PAR Thin Copy Desktop for VMware VDI, an integrated virtual desktop provisioning and management solution for VMware Virtual Desktop Infrastructure.

3PAR Thin Copy Desktop for VMware VDI is designed to let its customers automatically provision hundreds of high-performance virtual desktops that consume only a fraction of the bandwidth and storage capacity required with traditional storage.

3PAR says its Utility Storage enhances the benefits of implementing VDI on a traditional SAN by providing additional performance, simplified provisioning, and rapid recovery while reducing required capacity—benefits that are ideal for these next-generation virtualized environments.

3PAR Thin Copy Desktop for VMware VDI builds on 3PAR Virtual Copy to create a resilient utility computing infrastructure that maximizes the benefit of centralized desktop management. 3PAR Thin Copy Desktop offers high performance desktop booting, automated provisioning, and rapid desktop recovery while consuming 90% less capacity for desktop images.

3PAR also announced today enhancements to 3PAR Virtual Copy to support up to 128 read/writable snapshots per base volume and the ability to promote a child Virtual Copy snapshot to any of its read/writable parent snapshots. Up to 500 read-only snapshots per base volume also remain supported with these enhancements.

3PAR Thin Copy Desktop for VMware VDI comes with 3PAR Virtual Copy at no extra charge.

3PAR

Tripwire ConfigCheck Now VMware ESX 3.0 Compatible

July 21, 2008 by Robin Wauters Leave a Comment

Remember Tripwire ConfigCheck, the nifty free utility that rapidly assesses the security of VMware ESX hypervisor configurations compared to the VMware Infrastructure 3 Security Hardening guidelines? Well, Tripwire today announced the availability of Tripwire ConfigCheck for VMware ESX 3.0.

“The massive popularity of Tripwire ConfigCheck speaks loudly to the market need for solutions that address the knowledge and skills gap in managing virtual infrastructure. With this latest release, we leverage the best practices of VMware’s hardening security guidelines for 3.5 and 3.0.x environments increasing the overall value of the utility,” said Mark Gaydos, Tripwire VP of Marketing.

In addition to offering immediate insight into unintentional vulnerabilities in virtual environments, Tripwire also provides a remediation guide containing the necessary steps to return both VMware ESX 3.0 and 3.5 hosts to a known, secure state.