VMware Revenues Show Strength, Despite DownturnVMware Revenues Show Strength, Despite Downturn

VMware reported a solid third quarter, "despite the challenging economic environment," and CEO Paul Maritz predicted it will meet its 2008 goal of 42% to 45% growth over the previous year. He cautioned that final results may come in at the lower end of the range.

With its U.S. revenue up 24% and overseas revenue up 42%, VMware reported total revenue of $472 million for its third quarter, up an average 32% from the same quarter the year before.

Operating income increased 54% over the same quarter a year ago to $101 million, based on generally accepted accounting principles. Net income was $83 million, or 21 cents per share, compared with $65 million and 18 cents per share a year ago.

"We plan to expand our current VMware Infrastructure offerings into a comprehensive virtual data center operating system for an enterprise cloud that is highly elastic, self-managing and self-healing. This will enable customers to treat their IT infrastructure as a single, giant computer..." Maritz said in his third-quarter assessment.

VMware expects to bring out its desktop virtualization management system, VMware View 3.0, in the fourth quarter with "significant deliveries expected through 2009," Maritz said in prepared remarks on the third-quarter results.

Products to establish its virtual data center operating system are due in 2009, and the company plans to add vCloud products and services for virtualized enterprise clouds.

VMware at the end of the quarter staged its fifth annual user group meeting in Las Vegas, attended by 13,800. That compares with 10,000 last year, 7,000 in 2006, and 3,500 in 2005. It claims a customer base of 120,000.