Piper Jaffray Reports Good 4Q Results for VMware, Positive Impact for Red Hat

In a research report published today, Piper Jaffray views VMware's

outperformance of high-priority cloud infrastructure spending as a positive read-through for Red Hat Inc.

. Piper Jaffray explains further, “Specifically, VMW's license bookings growth accelerated a few points to 36%, with 2012 revenue guidance slightly above consensus. The results are consistent with our recent CIO survey, which ranked VMW as the #1 share gainer for 2012 among software vendors and showed a turning point for large enterprise Cloud adoption. While VMW noted that it is "cautious about the potential for slower IT spending," which is also consistent with our recent CIO survey, we remind investors that RHT is favorably positioned. For example, 88% of the 48 global technology resellers we surveyed in Q4 expect IT spending would shift toward lower-cost, opensource solutions such as RHEL if the global economy enters a recession.” Piper Jaffray maintains its Overweight rating and $59.00 PT on Red Hat Inc., which closed yesterday at $47.00. VMware closed yesterday at $86.00.