It might be hard to believe, but VMware recently celebrated its nine year anniversary, commemorating what it calls a "decade of innovation, excellence and phenomenal growth" - claims that are extremely difficult to deny, no matter whom you are or how hard you try. As an example, the company produced the following tidbits of information to validate those claims: In 2006, VMware revenue increased 83 percent year-o It might be hard to believe, but VMware recently celebrated its nine year anniversary, commemorating what it calls a “decade of innovation, excellence and phenomenal growth” – claims that are extremely difficult to deny, no matter whom you are or how hard you try. As an example, the company produced the following tidbits of information to validate those claims: In 2006, VMware revenue increased 83 percent year-over-year to $709 million; VMware grew Q4, 2006 revenues 101 percent year-over-year to $232 million, placing it on an annual run rate of more than $900 million 43 percent of VMware customers deploy all or most of their new applications in VMware virtual machines, with most customers expecting to virtualize at least 50 percent of their IT infrastructure within three years 85 percent of VMware customers use VMware virtualization products in production environments 75 percent of VMware customers plan to upgrade their existing VMware environments to VMware Infrastructure 3 by mid 2007 In 2006, VMware received 30 awards for innovation and product excellence, including eWEEK’s award for being one of the most 25 influential products of the past 25 years“We started VMware with the belief that virtualization was one of those rare technologies that could fundamentally change the established IT landscape and drive significant new value for customers and the industry in ways few could imagine,” said Diane Greene, president of VMware. “The accelerating adoption of VMware products by customers around the world, the new market opportunities it has created for partners and its emergence as one of the highest-growth multibillion-dollar software sectors has made virtualization the most significant IT trend of this decade.” The company has a great nine year track record behind them, and the industry is just now really starting to take off. IDC estimates that 2.3 million virtual servers were deployed in 2006, compared to 7.7 million physical servers in the same year! And a recent IDC survey showed that 76 percent of companies are going to be adopting or planning to adopt x86 virtualization in the next 12 months. Add to that, Forrester estimates that 46 percent of the Global 2000 are either already using or will pilot virtualization within the next twelve months and 71 percent of them are increasing their spending on virtualization in the next 12 months.When you see statistics like that, you have to wonder what VMware has planned for the next nine years. Happy anniversary! Software Development