VMware completed its spinout from Dell Technologies which held 81 percent of the Palo Alto, California-based software company, on Monday, transforming it into an independent publicly-traded company with a market capitalization of approximately $64 billion.
As a result of this separation, now the company plans to explore deeper agreements with cloud computing providers and consider “big scale” acquisitions that might help it grow, said a top executive.
Company CEO Raghu Raghuram told news agency Reuters that as now VMware is no longer under the control of Dell, he intends to actively seek more business opportunities.
“We are not a controlled entity anymore. This allows us to use equity to do large-scale transactions down the road,” he said. “Small, hot startups or reasonably valued big companies – it gives us access to the full spectrum,” he said, adding that “This truly allows us to go out and be the Switzerland of the industry.”
VMware technology is used by large corporations in their data centres to slice up physical computers into “virtual” machines for the ability to quickly scale up or down depending on the task at hand, allowing them to get more work done.
Many large corporations are deploying a combination of their own data centres and one or more cloud providers, which has, in turn, prompted other cloud providers to form relationships with VMware so that they may have better access to the company’s clientele.
Dell and other shareholders will receive a special dividend of around $27.40 per share, or approximately $11.5 billion, as a result of the spinout, which Dell has stated it intends to use to help pay down debt.
