VMware Announces General Availability of vCloud Air in Germany

MUNICH, GERMANY--(Marketwired - March 16, 2015) - VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced the expansion of VMware vCloud® Air™ in Europe with the general availability of service in Frankfurt, Germany.

Complementing VMware's UK location and the vCloud Air® Network™ of service providers, the new VMware-operated German data center provides customers with a Central European location that helps to address German and EU compliance and data protection regulations, while enabling them to take advantage of VMware's enterprise-class cloud.

"The continued expansion of VMware vCloud Air in Central Europe marks another major milestone in the global build out of our hybrid cloud service, bringing benefits to our customers through fast and easy access to the public cloud while reducing operating costs and providing compliance with local data protection regulations," said Pat Gelsinger, chief executive officer, VMware. "VMware's new Frankfurt service location enables IT teams, developers and lines of business to take full advantage of an enterprise-class public cloud service that is local and fully compliant with local data protection regulations."

"We know that when it comes to the cloud, trust remains the ultimate human currency," said Bill McDermott, CEO of SAP SE. "I congratulate VMware on the expansion of vCloud Air in Europe and I'm pleased that SAP is a proud partner and user of VMware solutions. VMware's commitment to the German marketplace creates a compelling opportunity for customers to leverage hybrid cloud services in support of a business growth agenda."

Hybrid Cloud Strategy is Business Critical
A recent IDC studyⁱ commissioned by VMware revealed that a majority of IT decision makers in Germany (67 percent) describe their organization's current or planned cloud strategy as hybrid.

VMware vCloud Air can integrate seamlessly with a company's current IT infrastructure, giving the ease and flexibility to extend applications into the public cloud as and when additional capacity is needed. The resulting hybrid cloud is compatible with existing enterprise applications, and also makes it easy to build new cloud-native applications, delivering businesses greater agility and efficiency in a more secure, reliable and compliant manner. IT departments can view, manage and operate this "best of both worlds" cloud environment in a unified way using the VMware vSphere® platform they already know and trust.

The same study also revealed that 65 percent of the IT decision makers in Germany consider a hybrid cloud environment as critical in helping their organization achieve its business goals and compete effectively in 2020.

The new VMware vCloud Air location in Frankfurt can enable customers to store their data at a location that addresses German and EU compliance and data protection standards. In addition, the general availability of vCloud Air in Germany further demonstrates VMware's commitment to support customers through the global expansion of its enterprise-class public cloud service.

VMware's Hybrid Cloud Provides Opportunities for Partners
With vCloud Air, channel and service provider partners play a key role integrating private data centers and public clouds and delivering hybrid solutions to customers. VMware vCloud Air was designed specifically with the channel community in mind. VMware distributors, solution providers and OEM partners sell vCloud Air the same way as any other VMware product.

"We have observed an increasing demand for a flexible and secure hybrid cloud platform among German and European customers -- with the requirement that their data is hosted in Germany," says Michael Fluegge, Director, Datacenter Sales at Computacenter. "The location of the cloud provider is one of the key criteria when selecting a suitable cloud provider. As a longstanding VMware partner, Computacenter is very excited about the new vCloud Air service location in Germany as we are now able to meet the requirements of our customers by providing them with a public cloud service from a leading global provider while considering local regulations for data protection, data security and data sovereignty."

VMware plans to make additional cloud services available from this location in 2015, including an initial set Google Cloud Platform services as announced earlier this year. Additional information on how to quickly get up and running on VMware vCloud Air can be found at VMware.com.

Additional Resources

• Read moreabout the VMware vCloud Air Disaster Recovery, which is now generally available.
• Find out more about VMware vCloud Air
• Visit the VMware vCloud Air online press kit to get service details and images
• Read "VMware Continues to Expand Hybrid Cloud Presence in Europe" blog post by Gavin Jackson, vice president and general manager, EMEA, Cloud Services Business Unit, VMware
• Read more at Tribal Knowledge, the VMware company blog, for the latest VMware and industry news
• Follow VMware vCloud on Facebook and Twitter
• Connect with VMware on Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and Google+

About VMware
VMware is a leader in cloud infrastructure and business mobility. Built on VMware's industry-leading virtualization technology, our solutions deliver a brave new model of IT that is fluid, instant and more secure. Customers can innovate faster by rapidly developing, automatically delivering and more safely consuming any application. With 2014 revenues of $6 billion, VMware has more than 500,000 customers and 75,000 partners. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.

VMware, vCloud Air and vSphere are registered trademarks or trademarks of VMware, Inc. in the United States and other jurisdictions. All other marks and names mentioned herein may be trademarks of their respective companies. The use of the word "partner" or "partnership" does not imply a legal partnership relationship between VMware and any other company.

SAP and other SAP products and services mentioned herein as well as their respective logos are trademarks or registered trademarks of SAP SE (or an SAP affiliate company) in Germany and other countries. See http://www.sap.com/corporate-en/legal/copyright/index.epx for additional trademark information and notices.

VMware Forward-Looking Statement
This press release contains forward-looking statements including, among other things, the expected benefits to customers of vCloud Air Network's new German location, expectations for IT trends and hybrid cloud demand and adoption in Germany and the availability of future offerings from the vCloud Air Network German location. These forward-looking statements are subject to the safe harbor provisions created by the Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. 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) adverse changes in general economic or market conditions; (ii) delays or reductions in consumer, government and information technology spending; (iii) competitive factors, including but not limited to pricing pressures, industry consolidation, entry of new competitors into the virtualization software and cloud, end user and mobile computing industries, and new product and marketing initiatives by VMware's competitors; (iv) VMware's customers' ability to transition to new products and computing strategies such as cloud computing, desktop virtualization and the software defined data center; (v) the uncertainty of customer acceptance of emerging technology; (vi) rapid technological changes in the virtualization software and cloud, end user and mobile computing industries; (vii) changes to product and service development timelines; (viii) VMware's relationship with EMC Corporation and EMC's ability to control matters requiring stockholder approval, including the election of VMware's board members; (ix) VMware's ability to protect its proprietary technology; (x) VMware's ability to attract and retain highly qualified employees; (xi) the successful integration of acquired companies and assets into VMware; and (xii) changes in EU and German regulations applicable to privacy and data storage. 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 VMware's most recent reports on Form 10-K and Form 10-Q and current reports on Form 8-K that we may file from time to time, which could cause actual results to vary from expectations. VMware assumes no obligation to, and does not currently intend to, update any such forward-looking statements after the date of this release.

SAP Forward-looking Statement
Any statements contained in this document that are not historical facts are forward-looking statements as defined in the U.S. Private Securities Litigation Reform Act of 1995. Words such as "anticipate," "believe," "estimate," "expect," "forecast," "intend," "may," "plan," "project," "predict," "should" and "will" and similar expressions as they relate to SAP are intended to identify such forward-looking statements. SAP undertakes no obligation to publicly update or revise any forward-looking statements. All forward-looking statements are subject to various risks and uncertainties that could cause actual results to differ materially from expectations The factors that could affect SAP's future financial results are discussed more fully in SAP's filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission ("SEC"), including SAP's most recent Annual Report on Form 20-F filed with the SEC. Readers are cautioned not to place undue reliance on these forward-looking statements, which speak only as of their dates.

ⁱ IDC, premier global provider of market intelligence for the information technology, polled 711 IT decision makers in companies in August 2014 from 100+ up to 5000+ employees across EMEA, USA and Asia (USA, UK, Japan, AUS/NZ, France and Germany).