VMware Customers Continue Expanding Use of Virtualization to Disaster Recovery, Data Security and Desktop Management

Virtualization Now Entrenched in Mainstream IT Operations with Customers Extending their Reliance on the VMware Platform to Work Smarter and Save Millions

PALO ALTO, Calif. – Feb 3, 2009 – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization solutions from the desktop to the datacenter, is riding the crest of a wave that continued to grow throughout 2008 and has reshaped the computing landscape by eliminating the decades-long bond that tied applications to physical hosts.  The sea change is reflected in the thousands of IT organizations around the world that have selected the VMware platform to solve longstanding business problems, such as data security and disaster preparedness, while collectively saving their organizations millions of dollars.

Lowe’s Companies, a premier home-improvement retailer, is one such VMware customer.  Lowe’s is working to virtualize much of its infrastructure and is in the process of deploying VMware vCenter Site Recovery Manager to automate its backup and restore processes, which helps ensure that business can continue uninterrupted regardless of technical glitches that inevitably occur in every datacenter. 

Another major VMware customer, ICICI Bank of India, is supporting its aggressive expansion plans by leveraging VMware Infrastructure 3 to build out an IT infrastructure that can help improve IT service delivery and reduce costs. 

“Customers view virtualization as both a strategic investment and a proven way to reduce costs,” said Tod Nielsen, chief operating officer at VMware.  “Customers understand that virtualization is about much more than just consolidation.  It’s about manageability, flexibility and being smart about how they run their businesses.  Rather than looking simply at hypervisors, customers want a complete toolset that complements and extends their hypervisors to provide a new compute layer that yields capital expense savings as well as operational expense savings.  This is why we’ve seen such aggressive adoption of the VMware platform over the past quarter.”

Cloud Computing and Manageability

Cloud computing is one of fastest-growing uses of virtualization.  bmi, the second-largest airline at London’s Heathrow Airport, has started moving up to 90 percent of its IT infrastructure to a VMware vCloud platform hosted by service provider Attenda.  And Melbourne IT, Australia’s largest domain name registrar, has employed vCloud technology to provide ‘on demand’ services to its customers, while also providing rapid provisioning and improved management of existing services.

Many other customers are using the VMware platform to improve management and automation, including Canterbury Christ Church University, the City of Pittsburgh, Peet’s Coffee and Tea, Portaal, and Post Danmark.  Peet’s is using VMware vCenter Stage Manager to replicate instances of its production and test environments for improved efficiency and responsiveness.

The City of Pittsburgh is using vCenter Site Recovery Manager to ensure high availability for mission-critical systems and to automate its failover processes.   “Business continuity is clearly top of mind for many of the agencies and constituents that we serve,” said Alex Musicante, network analyst, for the City of Pittsburgh.  “Virtualization has made it financially feasible for us to implement comprehensive disaster-recovery and application-resiliency strategies.”

A growing number of organizations across Asia Pacific are selecting VMware’s management and automation solutions to improve cost and operational efficiencies as well as enhance their internal IT shared-services platforms.  Some recent customers include Accenture (India), Bamrungrad Hospital Company Limited (Thailand), Behringer Holdings (Singapore) and China Life Insurance. Hap Seng Consolidated Berhad is using VMware Infrastructure 3 as the foundation for its disaster recovery (DR) plan, while the University of Auckland is implementing a DR plan with VMware Site Recovery Manager. 

Beating Microsoft with a Complete Solution from the Desktop to Datacenter

VMware’s success has moved well beyond the datacenter.  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.  Organizations use VMware View to provision and manage thousands of virtual desktops to maximize flexibility and reliability, minimize the manpower required for management and administration, and ensure application and data security.

With the range of uses for virtualization expanding, customers are looking for comprehensive virtualization solutions that offer robust toolsets, extreme scalability, ultra-high availability, and the flexibility to virtualize servers, PCs and other devices.  This has enabled VMware to differentiate itself from competitors such as Microsoft that offer products with narrow functionality. The U.S. Army is one of many large customers that selected VMware over Microsoft in the past quarter.

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.

Forward-Looking Statements

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 including our products and architecture, levels of demand for our products including 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; (viii) rapid technological and market changes in virtualization software; (ix) changes to product development timelines;(ix) our ability to protect our proprietary technology; (xii) our ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; and (xiii) fluctuating currency exchange rates.

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