Customers Across EMEA Drive Down Capital and Operating Expenses with VMware Virtualization Products
VMware Helping to Accelerate Adoption of Cloud Computing and Desktop Virtualization, Enabling Organizations to Increase Enterprise Flexibility and Cut Line Items Out of IT Budgets
CANNES, France and FRIMLEY, UK – February 25, 2009 – Today at VMworld Europe 2009, VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, announced a number of new customers across EMEA that are using the VMware platform to significantly reduce capital and operating expenses. These customers are experiencing benefits, such as simplified management, increased business agility, and dramatic cost savings, by virtualizing their desktop environments and implementing private clouds that leverage the VMware platform.
“Over the past 18 months, the discussion has ceased to be around whether we will see virtualization on a large scale across EMEA,” said Maurizio Carli, general manager, VMware EMEA. “The discussion is now around which strategic initiatives virtualization can support most effectively. Without a doubt, cloud computing is one of those initiatives. We are seeing rapid adoption of virtualization for both internal and external clouds. At a time where many companies face intense pressure to do more with less, cloud computing and virtualization have never made more sense. Together, they offer customers massive scalability and flexibility and the opportunity to significantly cut IT costs.”
Moving to Cloud Computing
VMware announced its VMware vCloud Initiative at VMworld Las Vegas 2008 in September. Since that time, the number of service providers supporting the initiative has grown from approximately 100 to more than 400.
T-Systems, one of Europe’s largest businesses, presented their cloud computing strategy at VMworld Europe 2009, and has developed a cloud computing service – Dynamic Services – which is based on VMware Infrastructure. “For us, cloud computing today already has become a reality,” says Jörn Kellermann, vice president, application line DTAG at T-Systems.
Klaus Rubik, head of engineering and systems management at T-Systems says, “My team is building a large part of the foundation for T-Systems Dynamic Services and an important part of this platform is based on VMware technology. This gives us a significant success in the market.”
Revolutionizing the Desktop
An increasing number of VMware customers are using virtualization for centralized desktop management. This is reflected in the growing market demand for VMware View™, which enables IT organizations to deliver rich, personalized virtual desktops to any device from enterprise datacenters and cloud environments.
At this year’s VMworld Europe, Simon Spence, chief information officer for CB Richard Ellis, the leading global commercial real estate services company, presented his organization's successful virtual desktop implementation. Spence and his team are rolling out a virtual desktop infrastructure to more than 4,000 employees in 39 countries, with the aim of creating a single, standardized desktop for all CB Richard Ellis staff across Europe, the Middle East and Africa.
"We are currently creating a global desktop estate that will make all applications available to our own or contracted staff in any of our offices across Europe, the Middle East and Africa," said Spence. "The beauty of virtual desktops is that we can also provide these capabilities securely to our staff wherever they are and on whatever machine they use without any compromise on performance, even in the event of a major outage. In addition to this, we are looking to save up to £500,000 a year in capital and operating expenses by reducing hardware procurement, power consumption, datacenter floor space, cabling, and time devoted to desktop management.”
Standardizing on Virtualization
VMware’s customers are increasingly standardizing on VMware as their virtualization and datacenter platform. Nearly half (42 percent) of surveyed VMware customers report virtualization is now the “default build” of their datacenters, nearly double what was reported in 2007 (25 percent). Over half of VMware’s surveyed EMEA customers (57 percent) use VMware exclusively for x86 virtualization.
Checkpoint Systems International, a leading manufacturer of identification, tracking, security and merchandising solutions for the retail industry and its supply chain, is running all of its mission-critical SAP systems on VMware. "Any company using SAP will tell you that reliability and manageability are two of the key points they look for from any supporting platform they choose," said Michael Nogger, IT operations manager, Europe Checkpoint Systems International, GMBH. “VMware is certainly our platform of choice. In terms of reliability, we have a very robust infrastructure, which is currently delivering 99.7-percent uptime for our critical systems."
The IT services company of huge German-based insurance ERGO Group is standardizing its datacenters on virtualization from VMware. As part of its AREAL project, which is being driven by growing regulatory, technical and physical resource demands, the Group has started to move over 1,000 servers to a virtualized platform.
Italian motorcycle manufacturer Ducati has virtualized around 75 percent of its systems since June 2007, cutting hardware costs by approximately 30 percent. On its new virtualized infrastructure, Ducati has been able to implement new applications very quickly, which is vital in an industry that is literally ‘fast moving’ and has enabled the company to bring new products to market in less time than in the past.
The Power of Fusion
Finally, VMware has seen significant EMEA momentum for VMware Fusion 2, which was launched in September 2008. Last year VMware Fusion became the #1 selling Mac virtualization product in North America, according to NPD and it is regularly amongst the best software sellers on Apple’s online store and Amazon.com. Virtual machines created with VMware Fusion are used by the physicists at CERN -- the European Organization for Nuclear Research and the world's leading laboratory for particle physics -- who are working on experiments that run on the world’s largest particle accelerator, Large Hadron Collider (LHC).
Across the EMEA region, VMware now has more than 50,000 customers, including 91 percent of the UK’s FTSE 100; 95 percent of the Germany’s DAX 100; 100 percent of France’s CAC 40; 91 percent of Spain’s IBEX 35; and 87 percent of Italy’s MIB 30.
VMware continues to expand its presence in EMEA, as evidenced by VMworld Europe 2009 in Cannes, France, which was attended by more than 4300 customers, partners and industry analysts. The show focused heavily on the momentum around both internal and external cloud computing, desktop and application virtualization and the continued development of VMware’s partner ecosystem that supports virtualization with innovative storage, business continuity, security, management and automation solutions.
About VMware
VMware (NYSE: VMW) is the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter. Customers of all sizes rely on VMware to reduce capital and operating expenses, ensure business continuity, strengthen security and go green. With 2008 revenues of $1.9 billion, more than 130,000 customers and more than 22,000 partners, VMware is one of the fastest growing public software companies. Headquartered in Palo Alto, California, VMware is majority-owned by EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC). For more information, visit www.vmware.com.
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Forward-Looking Statements
All information in this disclosure regarding future directions and intent are subject to change or withdrawal without notice and should not be relied on in making a purchasing decision of VMware's products. The information in this disclosure is not a legal obligation for VMware to deliver any material, code, or functionality. The release and timing of VMware's products remains at VMware's sole discretion.
Statements made in this press release which are not statements of historical fact are forward-looking statements and are subject to the safe harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Such forward-looking statements relate, but are not limited, to continuing customer adoption and deployment of virtualization technologies and our products, including levels of demand for our products, priorities in customer spending, future prospects for our new strategic initiatives and customer perceptions of competing products. Actual results could differ materially from those projected in the forward-looking statements as a result of certain risk factors, including but not limited to: (i) current uncertainty in global economic conditions that pose a risk to the overall economy as consumers and businesses may defer purchases in response to tighter credit and negative financial news, which could negatively affect product demand; (ii) further adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (iii) delays or reductions in consumer or information technology spending; (iv) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures, industry consolidation, entry of new competitors into the virtualization market, and new product and marketing initiatives by our competitors; (v) our customers’ ability to develop, and to transition to, new products, (vi) the uncertainty of customer acceptance of emerging technology; (vii) rapid technological and market changes in virtualization software; (viii) changes to product development timelines;(ix) our ability to protect our proprietary technology; (x) our ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; and (xi) fluctuating currency exchange rates. These forward looking statements are based on current expectations and are subject to uncertainties and changes in condition, significance, value and effect as well as other risks detailed in documents filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including the report on Form 10-Q for the quarter ended September 30, 2008, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. VMware disclaims any obligation to update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.