EMC & VMware Hit Crossroads

Has the VMware bubble burst? Last night, that vendor reported its fourth-quarter results, posting a massive quarterly revenue hike, but dipping below Wall Street estimates.

The virtualization pioneer, which was the darling of Wall Street when it made its headline-grabbing $1.7 billion IPO last year, also warned that it expects its revenue growth to slow this year.

Cue a drop of more than 30 percent in VMware's share price today and increasing pressure on parent company EMC (which still owns most of VMware's stock) to sell the rest of the virtualization giant.

EMC CEO Joe Tucci was grilled on this topic during his firm's own earnings call this morning, but provided little hint of EMC's gameplan.

"I am not going to go into those specifics now, but both EMC and VMware are performing well," he said, adding that VMware has only been a public company for a short time. "Were very pleased with the asset mix; we have no plans to distribute at this time."Despite a solid set of results today, EMC's own stock was down just over 6 percent this afternoon, prompting one analyst to recommend cutting the VMware umbilical.

"We remain neutral on the [EMC] shares as the stock continues to be weighed down by volatile movements on VMware shares," wrote Goldman Sachs analyst David Bailey, in a note released earlier today. "Our view on EMC's stock would improve with more certainty that EMC would cleave off VMware in early 2009, a stance that EMC appears to be inching toward as its stock bears the brunt of VMware's miss."

In an increasingly uncertain economic climate, with increased competition from other virtualization players such as Microsoft and Citrix/XenSource, it seems likely that EMC and VMware may be going their separate ways.

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