Back in September 2004 when VMWare launched in one of the market’s hottest IPOs since the tech crash, I asked how the company could achieve such high values in a market where Microsoft looked fully capable of launching its own products, especially after it had acquired Softricity.

Last week VMWare dumped Diane Green, the company’s co-founder and CEO. Seems just a few weeks since she presented at an Intel FasterFS event in New York.

Bill Snyder at Computerworld had a few interesting comments on it:

But on another front, when VMware gave CEO and co-founder Diane Greene the boot this week, it was an implicit affirmation that Microsoft (and other players) are undermining the young company’s grip on the market.
Moreover, it’s a good time to remember that Microsoft, for all its shortcomings, still beats the pants off Apple in the market for operating systems. Don’t go ballistic on me, please. I’m not implying that Vista is better than Leopard — merely that it is ubiquitous, while Apple’s OS is still a niche product.

Then this excerpt from a post on Fortune
“Baboo,” of São Paulo, who posted this telling comment on Fortune’s Web site after Axel Springer AG, one of Europe’s largest newspaper publishers, announced it was moving 10,000 users from Windows PCs to Macs:
“Microsoft sold 150 million Vista licenses in 15 months = 10 million per month = 333k per day = 13,880 per hour.
10,000 new Macs in 5 years = 10,000 new Vistas in 43 minutes
If they’re switching 1 MILLION Macs = 3 days of Windows Vista
If they’re switching 10 MILLION Macs = 30 days of Windows Vista.”

Nothing like a little math for a reality check.

Perhaps fitting then that Paul Martiz, the former No. 3 exec at Microsoft, was appointed VMware’s new CEO.

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