Wikipedia
VMware, Inc. is an American company that provides cloud and virtualization software and services, and claims to be the first to successfully virtualize the x86 architecture commercially. Founded in 1998, VMware is based in Palo Alto, California. In 2004, it was acquired by and became a subsidiary of EMC Corporation, then on August 14, 2007, EMC sold 15% of the company in a New York Stock Exchange IPO. The company trades under the symbol VMW.
VMware's desktop software runs on Microsoft Windows, Linux, and Mac OS X, while its enterprise software hypervisors for servers, VMware ESX and VMware ESXi, are bare-metal hypervisors that run directly on server hardware without requiring an additional underlying operating system.
In 2016 Dell was in the process of acquiring EMC, VMware's majority owner. In January 2016 the entire development team behind VMWare Workstation and Fusion was disbanded and all US developers were immediately fired. The company said that "the restructuring activities will not impact the existence of any current product lines", that "roles and responsibilities associated with particular businesses will be moved to other regions and office locations", and that investment would continue "with emphasis on our growth products". The future of Workstation and Fusion is uncertain. VMware Workstation versions 12.0.0, 12.0.1, and 12.1.0 were released at intervals of about two months in 2015. On 24 April 2016 maintenance release 12.1.1 was released.