After more than 14 years on the public market, VMware will finally be on its own. Investors should enjoy its parting gift.
A monthslong effort to spin off the software maker from Dell Inc. should be completed Monday with the payment of an $11.5 billion special dividend to VMware shareholders. Dell began evaluating the spinoff last year—about four years after its acquisition of EMC also gave it ownership of the company that pioneered the use of so-called virtualization software used by businesses to squeeze more performance out of their networks. VMware went public in 2007 but was still majority-owned at the time by EMC.