VMware's revenue doubles in first quarter

In VMware's first quarter as part of storage specialist EMC, the server software maker's revenue more than doubled to $39 million, EMC said Thursday. The result exceeded EMC's expectations, which it did not detail. When EMC completed the VMware acquisition in January, it estimated VMware would add between $175 million and $200 million to its revenue for 2004.

VMware's software lets a computer run several operating systems simultaneously, a useful feature in utility computing, which calls for computing jobs to be shuffled among different machines. More than half of VMware's revenue has come from server products, but the EMC subsidiary is pushing its workstation product--which competes with Microsoft's Virtual PC. Two weeks ago, the company cut the VMware workstation price to $189, down from $299.