EMC sales boosted by VMware in Q2

Storage giant meets Wall Street expectations bang on, helped along by booming virtualisation arm

EMC has delivered second-quarter financial results in line with analyst expectations, aided by its cloud and virtualisation arm VMware, which smashed Wall Street forecasts earlier this week.

For the quarter ending 30 June, EMC's net income jumped nine per cent to $750m on sales which rose six per cent to $5.6bn (£3.7bn). Earlier on this week, VMware posted Q2 sales of $1.24bn – up 11 per cent annually and ahead of expectations of $1.23bn.

EMC's chief operating officer David Goulden put the storage giant's growth partly down to VMware's stellar performance, coupled with slower expansion across its other divisions.

Within EMC, its Information Infrastructure and Information Storage arms both grew four per cent annually, while its RSA security division crept up three per cent. Pivotal, its newly launched initiative with VMware and General Electric, made "very good progress" following its 1 April launch, EMC claimed.

Product sales were up annually by two per cent to total $3.26bn, while services sales rose 11 per cent to $2.36bn over the same period.

All four of the firm's major regions experienced growth in the quarter too, with EMEA up six per cent year on year, and North America and the Asia-Pacific and Japan region enjoying a four per cent and 12 per cent annual boost respectively.

The firm's chief executive Joe Tucci said each separate business division within EMC comes together to address the vendor's long-term strategic plan.

"The strength and demand we saw during the quarter, despite a cautious IT spending environment, speaks to the soundness of our strategy, the value customers see in our federated business model, and the massive opportunity ahead in cloud computing, big data and trusted IT," he said. "EMC Information Infrastructure, VMware and Pivotal are positioned on the leading edge of these significant trends."