Is Oracle About To Go After VMware Virtualization Turf? (ORCL, VMW, CTXS, MSFT, EMC)

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By Douglas A. McIntyre Updated Published
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There is market chatter, despite the sell-off, that Oracle Corp. (NASDAQ: ORCL) may play catch-up in the virtualization space.  Jefferies has noted that Larry Ellison and friends may soon acquire privately held Virtual Iron, one of the leading independent virtualization players.  If the rumor is true, Oracle would be taking direct aim at VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW).

The key difference between Virtual Iron and VMware is that VMware is the largest and goes after enterprise accounts.  Virtual Iron has won many small to medium-sized businesses.

Virtual Iron is also deemed as being more affordable.  It competes against Citrix Systems (NASDAQ: CTXS) and Microsoft (NASDAQ: MSFT) .   It is also complementary with the Oracle Virtual Machine.  Needless to say, IF Oracle acquires it then Virtual Iron will be in more large businesses  and EMC Corporation (NYSE: EMC) will have more competition for its ex-subsidiary VMware.

We have not tried to reach Oracle, but our inquiry about Virtual Iron has  been unanswered.  We do not expect any comment.

Jon C. Ogg
March 2, 2009

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About the Author Douglas A. McIntyre →

Douglas A. McIntyre is the co-founder, chief executive officer and editor in chief of 24/7 Wall St. and 24/7 Tempo. He has held these jobs since 2006.

McIntyre has written thousands of articles for 24/7 Wall St. He is an expert on corporate finance, the automotive industry, media companies and international finance. He has edited articles on national demographics, sports, personal income and travel.

His work has been quoted or mentioned in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, NBC News, Time, The New Yorker, HuffPost USA Today, Business Insider, Yahoo, AOL, MarketWatch, The Atlantic, Bloomberg, New York Post, Chicago Tribune, Forbes, The Guardian and many other major publications. McIntyre has been a guest on CNBC, the BBC and television and radio stations across the country.

A magna cum laude graduate of Harvard College, McIntyre also was president of The Harvard Advocate. Founded in 1866, the Advocate is the oldest college publication in the United States.

TheStreet.com, Comps.com and Edgar Online are some of the public companies for which McIntyre served on the board of directors. He was a Vicinity Corporation board member when the company was sold to Microsoft in 2002. He served on the audit committees of some of these companies.

McIntyre has been the CEO of FutureSource, a provider of trading terminals and news to commodities and futures traders. He was president of Switchboard, the online phone directory company. He served as chairman and CEO of On2 Technologies, the video compression company that provided video compression software for Adobe’s Flash. Google bought On2 in 2009.

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