Mike D’s Blog

You might be interested to know that Citrix does post their revenue by product mix.
Xen Server and Xen Desktop are in the "Other" category, as listed below.
The entire "Other" category delivered $16.6M or 4% of total revenue in Q4-08.
Here's the link:
http://media.corporate-ir.net/media_files/irol/...



OTHER
XenServer XenDesktop

Application Gateway Provisioning Server

EdgeSight Ardence Embedded

EasyCall

REVENUE BY PRODUCT GROUPINGS

(in millions) 1Q08 2Q08 3Q08 4Q08 YTD 2008
Application Virtualization $267.6 $264.9 $273.1 $276.1 $1,081.6
Online Services $62.0 $63.7 $64.9 $69.4 $260.1
Application Networking $37.6 $54.4 $47.5 $53.6 $193.0
Other $9.8 $8.8 $13.4 $16.6 $48.6
Total* $377.0 $391.7 $398.9 $415.7 $1,583.4



Percentage of Total Sales 1Q08 2Q08 3Q08 4Q08 YTD 2008
Application Virtualization 71.0% 67.6% 68.5% 66.4% 68.3%
Online Services 16.4% 16.3% 16.3% 16.7% 16.4%
Application Networking 10.0% 13.9% 11.9% 12.9% 12.2%
Other 2.6% 2.2% 3.4% 4.0% 3.1%
Total 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0% 100.0%

Note: This document should be read in conjunction with the Company's SEC Filings.
*amounts may not add due to rounding

Danny,

You need to read or listen to the actual call not just the financial, which as you said lump multiple products into "others".

In slide 8 of Citrix Q4 earnings release presentation

Server & Desktop Virtualization
• Delivered revenue of $9 million in 4Q08
•An increase of 40% over 3Q08

http://library.corporate-ir.net/library/10/102/...
/A9D43F58-2466-49B1-A1D9-8EF372F5BFAC_4Q08EarningsSlidesFinal.pdf

There is little doubt that 40% of annual growth on a $6.5 mil. product line is indicative of an unsuccessful solution, especially if we consider that Citrix is a well known company with established channel partners and sales force.

Mike's initial blog post was a bit short in my opinion, but I think he explained his message very clearly in his follow up posts and I believe his reading of the numbers is hard to object to.

For more details on the Citrix angle, check out CNN Money's report on Citrix 2008 Q4 results.

True that both Microsoft and Citrix are not pure virtualization players, but when people are making virtualization decisions in such a risky economy they are going to minimize the risk in their decision as much as possible. That usually means selecting VMware.

An extremely biased observation. Among the three, only VMware is the strictly virtualization player. It is like comparing Vespa to Honda. There is no doubt that VMware is the current market leader - but this specific blog posting does not mean anything. Very childish.

People make buying decisions all the time based on the strength of companies. Would you go buy something from Circuit City right now? Probably not. If you're going to do something as major as buy a virtualization solution, implement it, and base the future of your architecture on it you want to make sure you're with a solid company - a company where people are actually buying the products.

With that said, any comparison on revenue between VMware and Microsoft is going to be difficult. VMware alone makes many products in the virtualization space that Microsoft doesn't have (and won't have). Microsoft makes a lot of products that VMware doesn't have (and won't have) in many other areas (XBox, Office, etc). Neither have public earnings reports that break down revenue by product so you'll never be able to make a direct comparison.

The purpose of this post is to bring up that even in a tough economy VMware is doing much better as a company that Microsoft and Citrix. This is a company that has been consistently beat up in the press and by the financial market. And why? Usually it's blamed on earnings. All I was trying to illustrate here is that VMware is strong - even in a down economy. It's competitors are weak(er). If you actually listened to the Citrix earnings call for example you'll see that they did $9 MM in desktop and server virtualization combined in Q408. That alone shows the amount of software that people are really buying from the company.

I'm not sure why I've even typed this much. People that go around with anonymous stage names calling other people childish will never be convinced of any of this. Listen, my blog is my opinions so read if you want - don't if you don't want to. Won't hurt me either way. Probably better to go over to the Google Finance forums where at least you'll be in like company.

If you had taken the effort to read the financials of the companies that you ditch, you would have observed that "Xen Server and Xen Desktop--grew by 40 percent over the same quarter last year". I think the word "stellar" comes to mind for a 40% growth in revenue.

As for the Google Finance forums reference - I was not aware of that until you brought it up. I'll leave it to you to decide who spends more of their "valuable" time where. Cheers. Keep up the good work.

And if you had read the financial you would have seen that 40% growth was actually 38% and it was growth from $6.5 MM to $9 MM. Hardly stellar. Those numbers alone speak for the small number of people actually buying the products. Even worse is those numbers include maintenance and services so the license revenue was actually much lower.

Thanks though for the encouragement on the good work. A lot of people do find it valuable as is seen by readership and blog ranking. :)

I think I already made my point. You obviously do not get it. That is ok. Cheers.

I think he understood your point and replied admirably.

Seems clear to me.