VMware: New Silicon Valley Giant is born

No, not me musing this time. I was up late working the strategy game till 4 a.m this morning, so I'll just link you to San Jose Mercury news this time. (You have got a bit of an idea where VMware has to go in the coming 18 months from now in my last post anyways):

VMware, a company recently known only to hard-core technologists, debuted as the darling of Wall Street on Tuesday, with an opening-day surge that exceeded even Google's historic 2004 launch.

Stock of the Palo Alto maker of "virtualization" software soared 76 percent, eclipsing Google's 18 percent first-day gain. VMware's value at closing was $19.1 billion - ranking it as Silicon Valley's third-largest home-grown software company after Oracle and Adobe Systems. It was the largest initial public offering since Google achieved a $27 billion valuation.

The measurability is now pretty much public with the the stock prices but lets hope they can stay upwind for a while.

In Palo Alto, Jocelyn Goldfein, a senior director of research and development, offered a historical perspective. As a student at Stanford, she had studied under Rosenblum before VMware was launched. She also had an internship at Netscape during its epic IPO in 1995, considered the launch of the Internet age, and later experienced the boom and bust of a dot-com start-up.

"There is a little tinge of pragmatism to my euphoria," Goldfein said. "You can't take anything for granted. It feels magical, but it still has to be earned." Goldfein expressed confidence that success won't spoil VMware's "engineering-driven culture."

Wise words, sounds a lot like my wife! So the motto is : Simply keep doing things the way you always did!" Read the rest here.