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VMware: Value in the Cloud

Written by: Richard Saintvilus 04/24/12 - 10:26 AM EDT
Tickers in this article: VMW
The following commentary comes from an independent investor or market observer as part of TheStreet's guest contributor program, which is separate from the company's news coverage.

NEW YORK (TheStreet) -- The new buzzword of all buzzwords these days is "cloud computing." While not entirely a new concept, there are many companies racing and jockeying to be the first to either define or "re-define" what it means.

As you can imagine, it gets a bit complicated. It is broadly understood that "the cloud" means "the Internet." Think about it, when have you ever seen a network diagram demonstrating a route to the Internet that does not include a cloud clipart? It seems simple enough except when you couple it with the term "computing" -- an entirely new standard for activity that helps corporations deliver the level of services whether to their customers are internally within the enterprise.

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From that standpoint, there aren't many companies that do it as well as virtualization king VMware(VMW) , much less better.

As noted, the race for that tight space is pretty intense -- imagine a Nascar track where the cars are four-wide and bumper to bumper with one lap to go and no time to pit. In addition to VMware, the race includes names such as Microsoft(MSFT) , Oracle(ORCL) , Red Hat(RHT) , EMC(EMC) and of course Salesforce.com(CRM) .