EMC and VMware invited industry analysts to New York this week in order to go over their  reworked roadmap for the Pivotal Initiative, an upcoming joint venture between that two companies that was first announced in December last year.

At the time of the announcement, a spokesperson said that Pivotal will be responsible for managing cloud and Big Data assets that the firms are no longer interested in monetizing themselves. The list includes the Spring framework, the hugely popular Cloud Foundry PaaS, and a number of other projects that have not paid off so far. The company will be headed by Paul Maritz, VMware’s former CEO and current head of strategy.

These two initial plans remain the same, but some of the other recent details have been rehashed.

SiliconAngle founding CEO John Furrier reports that the number of workers that will be joining Pivotal dropped down from 1,400 to 1,250.  In addition, EMC will own 69 percent and VMware will own 31.

Here’s Furrier’s analysis of the news:

“The upshot for VMware and Gelsinger is about one word: Focus.    VMware can now focus on winning Software-led infrastructure, as I laid out in earlier posts here and here.  The stakes are high for VMware — that is, it must convert its leadership position in the enterprise to have a leading position in the always “shifting,” new software-led infrastructure industry.  Additionally VMware is taking the operating loss from Pivotal  off the books.  VMware is already raising guidance on 2013 operating margins while giving up only small chunks of revenue.  Stock is surging as a result.”

Furrier deems the spinoff a “bold move” that has the potential to “create large value for all players involved.”

Here with more analysis on the how and why of Pivotal’s initiative is Wikibon analyst Jeff Kelly, who appeared on this morning’s NewsDesk show with Kristin Feledy.

http://youtu.be/_CoN8fowb1g