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Dell Announces Long-Awaited Spinoff of VMware (siliconangle.com) 27

Dell has announced the long-expected spinoff of VMware, the computing virtualization company it has majority-owned since it bought then-owner EMC Corp. in 2016. From a report: The computing giant said it will spin off its 81% equity ownership in VMware, creating two standalone companies when the move is completed in the fourth quarter of this year. That timing depends on conditions such as a favorable Internal Revenue Service opinion that the transaction qualifies for tax-free status for Dell shareholders. The idea is to simplify the companies' capital structures, since arguably investors have valued both companies' stocks lower than they might have because of the uncertainties related to the complex capital structures. Dell's shares rose about 9% in after-hours trading, while VMware's shares rose about 1.6% in late trading. Under the spinoff, which Dell had signaled last year, VMware will distribute a cash dividend of about $11.5 billion to $12 billion to shareholders, which of course include publicly held Dell itself. Chairman and Chief Executive Michael Dell, along with financial partner Silver Lake Partners, own 60% of Dell shares. Dell will get $9.3 billion to $9.7 billion of that dividend, which the company said will help it get more investment-grade ratings and enable it to pay down debt it has gradually been reducing since buying EMC.
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Dell Announces Long-Awaited Spinoff of VMware

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  • Future? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by Luthair ( 847766 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @11:21AM (#61277248)
    I'm curious - does VMWare have a place in the future with the popularity of Docker and cloud deployment? Naively I would think their time has past?
    • by gantzm ( 212617 )
      Depends on which product you are talking about. I use VMWare Workstation all the time for software development. It's a very valuable product for me. ESXI and Docker are completely different beasts from one another. I can still see a lot of corporations using ESXI to host internal applications.
    • by Nick ( 109 )

      VMware is now available on AWS, and they've been buying up quite a few containerization companies and incorporating that into vsphere 7 (ex: Tanzu).

      And even with public cloud providers out there, there will always be a need for on-prem hybrid cloud where VMware will have a role. I mean, you gotta have some things on premesis.

      • by Luthair ( 847766 )
        Even on premise it seems like Docker containers could be used in many of the same situations one would have previously used traditional virtualization.
        • Yeah, but what are you running your docker host system on?

          There are so many advantages to hardware virtualization that even if you're all-in on containers, you would probably still not run bare metal host operating systems.

          Plus I would be surprised if there was any organization of any decent scale that didn't have some need for things which were not docker compatible.

    • by laktech ( 998064 )
      i use to it virtualize my windows applications that don't work under sandboxie, like fusion360.
    • Cloud deployment has limits, especially in the area of long term trust that the application will still run after 20-30 years, also your product that you may want to be deployed you are going to need tighter control than that what the Cloud Service has to offer.
      Also to note, and I am trying not to sound like a Right Wing Nut Job, The Cloud Company has a reputation to maintain, so if you are a business like Parlor who wants to skirt the limit on what is legal and illegal, as well you may do work that is deeme

      • by sjames ( 1099 )

        Cloud is far from the answer to everything, but why license VMware when you can use KVM or Hyper-V for free?

    • Docker/Kubernetes has obviously cut into the market that was once dominated by VMware. There are cases where a VM is able to meet requirements that a Container cannot. This often boils down to requirements for isolation or security or long-term support.
      If you're in charge of a department's cloud infrastructure, I'd recommend that you weigh costs and benefits carefully and be ready to use both VMs and containers. You can be careful with how much money you pay VMware or spend on dedicated equipment for VMs. Y

      • I'm not sure where to start with this, you seem to be conflating VMs and containers with on premise and cloud. When you got to container start times, oh boy... I have to help dispel this Inception-grade confusion that is hanging over Docker and K8s

        A container is just a sandboxed process. That is all. There is _nothing_ else to it. Any other attribute credited to containers is a big lie. They're conventions that can be applied to any not-sandboxed process. Containers are not stateless, you're simply ru

    • You can run Windows inside docker now?

    • Re:Future? (Score:4, Informative)

      by jwhyche ( 6192 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @01:04PM (#61277684) Homepage

      I guess it really depends on your need. In your industrial area VMware server is king. The last few jobs I have worked on have been using WMware server managing up to 1500 VMs at one time. I don't know what other vulgarization software out there that can handle that many systems.

      VMware Workstation, maybe not so much. I can think of half a dozen virtualization systems for workstations that are just as good as VMware. Probably a few of them even better. Plus most workstation OS's these days have some kind of virtualization layer built in. Most linux distro do and even now Windows 10 has hyper V built in.

      For me I've used VmWare Workstation since version 6 and as long as I can talk someone else in to paying for it, I will continue to upgrade. On version 16 now.

    • by sjames ( 1099 )

      Not just docker, but the existence of free direct alternatives to VMware itself. Between the various KVM based systems on Linux and FreeBSD and Hyper-V on Windows, there's not so much call for a proprietary solution any more. The free competition will only get better over time.

    • I'm curious - does VMWare have a place in the future with the popularity of Docker and cloud deployment? Naively I would think their time has past?

      Look, anyone can see that there would be no need to virtualize an OS if said OS didn't suck at being multiuser or efficient use of large scale hardware. I'm being a little facetious... not much.
      Really, it's much easier to run multiple virtualized Linux kernel/OS, than to evolve a Linux environment from its antique 80's multiuser model to an acceptable modern multi-tenant design.

      Stateless, isolated processes, and some janky orchestration software... puhlease, that's a cutsy wutsy baby step. The best way t

  • I'm out (Score:5, Informative)

    by timeOday ( 582209 ) on Thursday April 15, 2021 @11:21AM (#61277250)
    I've used VMWare for a couple decades, but the last several times I went to use it, it no longer worked with the kernel's current patchlevel (both Windows and Linux) and - and this is the bad part - the fix was only in the next major version, which means a repurchase. It's basically a subscription model now because they rev the major version every year.

    Go ahead and tell me they don't care about Workstation users, it's the datacenters with deep pockets, etc, fine. But then there is Docker, Singularity, on and on, the free competitors have proliferated and have major users too.

    • by Malc ( 1751 )

      I've also been using it for almost as long, and this forced upgrade for Fusion is really beginning to irritate me. It doesn't help that the current version can't access the network if the host has a Cisco VPN connected, and it remains to be seen if they will support ARM anytime soon on M1 Macs, which Parallels does. I/O performance of the hypervisor or the desktop Fusion on Macs is not exactly stellar. It does some things really well though, which I appreciate every time I hear colleagues complaining abo

  • they need to add CEPH direct to it proxmox has it and an backup tool that is like the veeam tools

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