Revenue for the three months to Dec. 31 was US$835.6 million, up from $608.2 million in the fourth quarter of 2009 and ahead of analysts' expectations, Thomson Reuters said.

Net income was $120 million, or $0.28 per share, up from $56 million and $0.14 per share in the same quarter last year, VMware said.

License sales were up 39 percent while services revenue increased 36 percent. Each now count for about half of VMware's total business.

"VMware clearly benefited in the fourth quarter from both an uptick in spending and the momentum of virtualization as the central technology for modernizing infrastructures," President and CEO Paul Maritz .

The company expects revenue for the first quarter -- the one that ends March 31 -- to be between $800 million and $820 million, Chief Financial Officer Mark Peek said in a statement. That would be a jump of 26 percent to 29 percent from last year and above the current analyst estimate of $786 million.