I have been puzzled by why my favorite company VMWare has been in near free-fall. This company has been doing everything right their products are great and that type of technology will lead the way for some years to come. I suspect they have some juicy patents and are presently market leaders. Their growth has been stellar in a market that isn’t so why. This is a lesson in not paying attention to two real fundamentals; People and people. It turns out that EDS somewhat controls VMW and I didn’t know this. EDS is a large IT player and I have always hated them. As a technology person I have never had a single iota of interest in their products. If you gave me their entire product line for free I would not even plug a single thing in to see what it does. I would pack it all up and sell it on ebay. I see EDS as products for old boring companies in the same way I see Depends as a product for old boring people. VMWare on the other hand is the future or at least it was. The leader of VMWare recently left to “spend more time with her family” or some such. Well it looks like this woman was a powerhouse that may very well have been driving the company to the heights it was reaching. But now she is gone. So a boring company that sells the IT version of geriatric diapers is now running a company that was trail blazing one potential future for both hardware and operating systems. I suspect that most people don’t think that this is going to work out so well and have have dumped VMWare for the semi digested cabbage dinner laden diaper that it might become. So my lesson here is to not only look at the fundamental technology but to figure out what critical lynch pins are making it so and keep an eye on those as well. Also to look at the personalities involved. Any egomaniacs? Two egomaniacs? So now I have a checklist. Tech fundamental, check. Finances look good, check. Personalities in check, check. Then keep checking these things as time goes by.