V-Day: VMware gets pounded, SWsoft becomes Parallels (finally)

 Monday was  a big day in virtualization.

First, VMware said it  doubled its profits and boosted revenue by 80%  in its fourth quarter.  Wall Street rewarded it by sending the shares into an after-hours freefall.  Well, the fact that VMware president Diane Green said the company would hold steady on pricing in the face of Microsoft’s imminent Windows-Server-2008-and-Hyper-V onslaught had something to do with that. Nothing puts a scare into analysts more than Microsoft entering an entrenched player’s market. 

And it’s not just Microsoft: Oracle, Citrix and others are playing hardball in virtualization.

SWsoft, another of the virtualization gang, made news Monday as well when it  renamed itself Parallels Inc. SWsoft backed the popular Parallels software, you know, the Windows-runs-on-Mac people. One has to wonder what took so long.

The new-name tidbit was embedded in a press release touting availablity of Parallels Virtuozzo Containers Version 4.0

Barbara Darrow can be reached at bdarrow@techtarget.com.