How Does VMware Help Drive SaaS Growth?

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VMware Inc. is a technology company that specializes in cloud computing and digital workspace technology that empowers organizations to deploy and manage software, applications, services, and digital workspaces within private and public cloud environments.

In this article, we will explore VMware’s recent growth in SaaS and subscription sales, leading to a surge in revenue.

Table of Contents

Overview of VMware and its growth in SaaS and subscription sales

VMware is a leader in software-defined computing technologies that help its customers adopt a hybrid cloud model. The company has grown from its roots in virtualization software to offer a broad portfolio of networking, storage, security and other management solutions for data centers, private clouds, mobile and other devices. With the move to cloud computing continuing rapidly, VMware’s growth has been bolstered by strong sales of its software-as-a-service (SaaS) and subscription offerings.

In its most recent financial quarter, VMware’s total net revenue rose 21% year over year to $2.98 billion with 14% coming from SaaS and subscriptions. Total software revenue was up 20% with services growing 31%. This particularly highlights the company’s transition towards being more enterprise solution focused versus traditional licensing of physical hardware or purely virtual based solutions. It is part of a larger transition that many in the technical world have noted as accelerated during this COVID-19 pandemic as organizations attempt to hone strategies for distributed workforce operations.

Contributing their significant portion of revenues are their two main SaaS offerings – VMware Horizon Cloud Service and vRealize Suite Cloud which provides cloud management capabilities such as security, automation etc., according to its latest quarterly report documents filed with U.S Securities Exchange Commissions (SEC). Furthermore “VMware Tanzu” has seen an increase in customer adoption due to boosted demand for Kubernetes’ workload managing capabilities from companies looking for better performance from large-scale distributed applications across private and public cloud environments.” Overall, VMware’s efforts have contributed to the company’s exceptional results, including around 1 million customers now utilizing their SaaS products in comparison with 418k customers utilizing them at the same time last year.

Revenue Surge

VMware reported a 15% year-over-year increase in revenue and a 72% surge in subscription and software as a service (SaaS) sales. The company also increased its cash flow from operations to $2.2 billion, compared to $1.8 billion the previous year. This leads to the record-breaking revenue surge.

Let’s discuss how the growth was achieved.

Details of the company’s financial performance

VMware, Inc. reported revenue growth of 11% year-over-year to $2.97 billion in the third quarter of 2020, with subscription and software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings driving most of this growth.

VMware reported that total revenues grew by 11 percent overall, with license revenues growing three percent and subscription and SaaS revenues growing 24 percent. In addition, services revenue grew 19 percent compared to last year, driven by professional services revenue growth of 16 percent and training and certification revenue growth of 25%.

In addition to its strong financial results in Q3 2020, VMware also saw an increased use of its SaaS offerings — like its AWS cloud computing platform — which drove a total serviceable addressable market (SAM) increase of 88%. Further illustrating the success of their technology engagement model was their yearly recurrent revenue (YRR), which was up 39% year over year due to stronger subscription sales and longer standing customer relationships.

Reasons for the revenue surge

VMware announced impressive second-quarter results on Thursday, with double-digit revenue growth in subscription and Software as a Service (SaaS) sales leading to record revenue. The company reported total revenue of $2.87 billion, an increase of 15% year over year and higher than the $2.71 billion estimated by analysts from FactSet. Excluding one-time items, adjusted earnings were $1.54 per share, higher than the consensus estimate of $1.32.

Revenue was driven mainly by strong performance in VMware’s cloud segment and its network and security line of business. The company said it saw a surge in SaaS offerings and subscription services that helped drive growth across the board, including a 39% increase in SaaS revenue from a year ago and a 12% jump in subscription services revenue from last quarter. Other factors contributing to the boost include increased adoption of multi-cloud strategies and an uptick in demand for cloud application services such as SD-WAN edge devices for security purposes. Moreover, VMware’s involvement in major digital transformation projects also contributed to the impressive growth figures.

In addition to healthy top-line growth, VMware saw improvements across other key metrics such as operating income, which rose 17%, gross margin expansion at 64%, non-GAAP operating margin of 28%, cash flow from operations up 10%, its highest’ ever cash balance position at $22 billion, and better return on equity measure with annualized return increasing by 24%. All these factors support their strong forward outlook – reinforcing long term sustainable success achieved aptly so far through solid execution capability that positions them well ahead of competition while rewarding its consumers with advanced technology offerings fueled by innovative products released competitively meeting timely needs converging customers to their portfolio?

SaaS and Subscription Sales

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and Subscription services have been growing rapidly in recent years and have taken a large chunk of the market share. This has been especially true for VMware who have seen a large revenue surge due to the increasing demand for SaaS and Subscription services.

Let’s take a closer look at this growth and some of its key benefits.

Overview of SaaS and subscription sales

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and subscription sales are becoming increasingly popular due to their convenience and affordability. As the technology sector continues to evolve with the introduction of cloud computing, SaaS and subscriptions are critical components of the industry’s growth.

This new realm of software delivery has been a huge success for companies like VMware. A renowned leader in virtualization solutions, VMware has leveraged its expertise in cloud computing to increase its revenue through SaaS and subscription sales. This has enabled them to become a dominant force in the promising market for software applications delivered via the internet.

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Rather than selling individual licenses for products, SaaS companies offer businesses access to their software as a service over an extended period for a monthly or annual rate. With this business model, customers reap multiple benefits; they only pay for what they need rather than investing in numerous large license fees, they get frequent updates from providers on the latest features or bug fixes at no additional cost. In addition, they receive continuous support from those same providers.

The advantages of embracing this kind of subscription model speak for itself; it’s no wonder many established vendors like VMware are transitioning into providing solutions through this channel and traditional software products. More companies are expected to shift towards providing SaaS solutions as businesses recognize their value in cost savings and convenience.

Benefits of SaaS and subscription sales

Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) and subscription models have rapidly become the preferred software purchasing method, especially in larger enterprise organizations. For businesses, SaaS and subscription models offer numerous advantages beyond the obvious cost savings associated with subscription pricing.

Firstly, SaaS and subscription sales offer businesses flexibility in delivery, consumption and payment methods when purchasing software applications. Instead of deploying expensive on-premises hardware and software installations that require ongoing maintenance to stay up to date, organizations can now access cloud services with a simple monthly or yearly fee. Users can also access the latest product version throughout their contracted periods, meaning enhancements can be delivered quickly and automatically for no additional cost.

Additionally, due to the flexible “pay as you go” model used by most SaaS applications, businesses can adopt new technologies without long term contracts or capital outlays tied up in large investments or overbuying software they do not need yet. Businesses benefit further from reduced IT overhead due to elimination of labor associated with installing, configuring and maintaining systems on-site. The vendor’s cloud service provider handles these jobs.

These saved resources can be reallocated within an organization for more lucrative tasks such as developing new products or services for customers instead of wasting time maintaining existing technology inventory.

Finally, reducing infrastructure costs also allows businesses to free up the budget for reinvestment into higher priority areas like research & development or marketing campaigns sooner than possible.

Impact of SaaS and subscription sales on VMware’s revenue

SaaS (Software as a Service) and subscription models are helping drive VMware’s break-neck revenue growth. Over the past 12 months, VMware has increased its sales in both categories, reporting an impressive 14 percent year-over-year increase in software sales and a 23 percent jump in subscription sales.

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SaaS helps customers reduce their IT spending by providing on demand access to applications and services over the Internet, allowing businesses to rapidly experiment with new ideas without the need for costly infrastructure investments. Additionally, subscription pricing gives customers predictable spending levels to help control IT budgeting forecasts.

As software applications and workloads move to a distributed model based on cloud computing technology, VMware’s platform offers customers the flexible infrastructure needed to support these applications while providing safeguards against security threats. This combination of features gives customers more confidence in their ability to innovate while reducing operational costs.

VMware’s cloud products have become popular among businesses of all sizes as they seek ways to reduce capital expenditures while realizing faster time-to-value from their solutions. In addition to its cloud offerings, VMware offers traditional perpetual license pay-per-use models for customers who prefer this option.

The rise of SaaS and subscription models will likely continue as businesses move away from traditional software license pricing structures towards more modern service based solutions. This trend appears likely to benefit VMware for years.

Conclusion

VMware’s revenue surged in the first quarter of 2021 driven primarily by growth in its software-as-a-service and subscription offerings. The company reported that revenue increased in all four major product categories and customers were increasingly drawn to its cloud-platforms, products and services.

This section will discuss the conclusion and impact of this revenue surge for VMware.