Quoting Information Week

EMC Corp. said Thursday it expects shares of its VMware software unit to sell for about 17 percent more than previously projected amid growing interest in what has been touted as one of the hottest IPOs of the year.

VMware, whose sales over the past several quarters have been doubling from a year earlier, sells software that companies use to help manage data centers. The software allows companies to run a single server computer as if it were multiple machines.

Sales are soaring as the technology becomes mainstream in corporate data centers and makes its way to personal computers from companies including Apple Inc. and Dell Inc.(Dell)

EMC, in an amendment to its prospectus filed with the Securities & Exchange Commission, said it expects VMware shares to sell for between $27 and $29 each. It previously estimated the shares would sell for between $23 and $25 each.

EMC is selling 33 million shares of VMware, which will have about 375 million shares outstanding after the initial public offering. If the shares sell for $28 each, that would give VMware an implied market value of about $10 billion, ranking it as one of the world's largest publicly held software makers, behind Microsoft Corp.(MSFT), Oracle Corp., Adobe Inc., Symantec Corp and CA Inc.

VMware's key rivals include Microsoft and smaller privately held companies whose products are not as far advanced as VMware's and whose revenues from so-called virtualization software account for only a fraction of the $1 billion in annual revenue that VMware is generating.

Companies can save money using the software because they are able to reduce the number of computers they need to run their businesses.

The "virtual" machines that they build with VMware programs can quickly be moved from one server to another, in some cases traveling across computer networks to data centers around the world.

Virtualization software from privately held SWsoft, called Parallels, is one of the top-selling titles for Apple's Macintosh computers. It lets Mac users seamlessly run Windows programs such as Microsoft Outlook on their computers.

Earlier this week Dell said it plans to start selling PCs that can run several virtual machines as early as next year.

VMware began its roadshow last week and the IPO is expected to price early next week.

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