RSSCisco Invests $150 Million in VMware
By the Betanews Staff | Published July 27, 2007, 11:35 AM
Following in the footsteps of Intel, Cisco will acquire 1.6 percent of virtualization company VMware from parent EMC for $150 million in cash. Unlike Intel, Cisco will not receive a board seat, but VMware said it would consider appointing a Cisco executive to its board in the future.
Facing increased competition from Microsoft and newcomer Parallels, the investments will help VMware maintain its lead in the marketplace. Through Intel, VMware now has closer ties to the hardware it virtualizes, and Cisco will work with the company to develop virtualization products designed for networking and datacenters. Both Intel and Cisco stand to gain from the transactions as well once VMware goes public.
The story here is Cisco's push to become a real player on the internet. It seems that people forget that they are big enough not to be ignored by anyone. They've already spent a ton of money. It will be interesting to see what they have planned for the future.
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I think EMC is crazy to give up any amount of control over VMware. They don't need help from Intel, Cisco, or anyone else. I work for one of the largest companies in the world, we've got over 7000 Windows servers alone, and the push is for server consolidation. The best way to do that is with virtualization, and we're already using VMware. EMC will make lots of money on their own.
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Excellent!
This can only be good for the VM market. We've got some *major* competition in this arena now and they're *all* innovating.
MS better start rethinking the VM issue pretty quickly here. They seem to be holding back on this.
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MSNBC has an article on it that VMWare will be the next Google. With $150m yield 1.6% of the company, which translates people value this company at $10 billions. So assume it will get to where Google is now ($150b), it's a 15 baggers for these investors.
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