VMware claims NSX revenue doubled during the first quarter, compared to last year, with 340 customers now running the network virtualization software in production.
The total number of NSX customers is now 1,400, the company added in a statement sent to the media Tuesday. VMware has avoided reporting exact sales for NSX, but in January the company said bookings for the platform were coming in at a rate equaling $600 million per year.
The latest stats came out with the company’s first-quarter earnings, which beat analysts’ expectations. Combined with an announced stock buyback of $1.2 billion, the news helped VMware stock climb 9 percent to $56.03 in after-hours trading Tuesday.
This doesn’t mean everything is rosy. In January, VMware announced layoffs of 800 employees, about 4 percent of its roughly 19,000 staff. That came hand-in-hand with a refocus for vCloud Air, the company’s public cloud effort, which will now concentrate on providing technology for partners’ clouds.
It served as a reminder that VMware is still finding new footing as server virtualization, its franchise market, maxes out. Among the company’s challenges is enterprises’ growing adoption of public clouds, which has limited the growth of enterprise data centers.
VMware is also undergoing some executive changes as Dell gets ready to acquire EMC, VMware’s parent company. In recent months, COO Carl Eschenbach, EVP Martin Casado (whose purview includes NSX), and CFO Jonathan Chadwick have all moved to other opportunities.
For its first quarter, which ended March 31, VMware reported revenues of $1.59 billion and net income of $161 million, or 38 cents per share.
Revenues for the same quarter a year ago were $1.51 billion on net income of $196 million, or 45 cents per share.
Non-GAAP earnings per share of 86 cents beat the analyst consensus of 84 cents, according to Thomson Financial.