VMware, an innovative but little known supplier of virtual machine technology, announced US$20 million round of funding Wednesday, led by Dell Computer.
VMware launched its first product a year ago, a virtual machine environment that mimics the Intel 32-bit architecture in software. VMware's virtual machine is capable of running any operating system that runs on Intel hardware, allowing such combinations as Windows and Linux to run alongside each other in separate sessions. One may crash without bringing down the other and the two may even communicate and exchange files through a standard file exchanger, Samba, which comes with VMware, explained Diane Greene, co-founder and chief executive.
"We see VMware as a significant emerging technology," said Jim Totten, Dell's vice president of worldwide software development. By backing the spread of VMware's virtual machine, Dell increases the usefulness of the Intel platform. FreeBSD Unix for Intel, for example, can be run alongside Windows under VMware.
VMware can also be used to host a development environment, where code written under Windows 98 could be test driven under MS DOS, Windows 3.1, Windows NT or Windows 2000, as well as FreeBSD Unix and Linux. VMware, however, does not support operation of IBM's OS/2.
Application service providers or intranet managers may one day use VMware on servers to offer end users a wide selection of applications, without the users worrying about what operating system they were designed for, said Greene.
Other participants in the financing were Azure Capital Partners, Chase H&Q Capital Partners and The Goldman Sachs Group.
