Partitioning software maker VMware has set up a small shop in the UK to head overseas operations in EMEA.

A modest team of 5 employees have their offices in Camberley and report into Mark Stradling, vice president of EMEA. VMware plans to expand the size of the staff at a quick clip, according to a company spokeswoman.

The company has thrived during the economic slump with its desktop, workstation and server partitioning software being used as hardware consolidation tools. Running numerous applications inside of Windows and Linux partitions has been an attractive option for companies that bought too much Intel kit and needed to shrink their data centers down.

The software can also help with shuffling code between test and production environments and for testing applications on a variety of OS and hardware platforms.

VMware higher ups, however, certainly got a bit of a fright earlier this year when Microsoft acquired Connnectix Corp.'s Virtual PC products, including Virtual PC for Mac, Virtual PC for Windows and Virtual Server.

Connectix's Virtual Server product is but a blip on the screen right now as compared to VMware's GSX and ESX Server software, but having Redmond attacking the partitioning market makes the competitive landscape far more challenging.

With more than 50 percent of its sales coming outside of the U.S., VMware appears to be gearing up to defend its overseas turf for when the guns of Redmond start firing. ®