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VMware CEO Paul Maritz Steps Over To New Role at EMC
After leading VMware to glorious heights since joining the company in 2008, CEO Paul Maritz has stepped down to become a technology strategist at VMware's parent company, EMC, where there are already rumors about his eventually succeeding long-time CEO Joe Tucci. Replacing Maritz as CEO of VMware, effective September 1, is Pat Gelsinger, currently president and COO at EMC Information Infrastructure Products. Gelsinger has worked at EMC since 2009, after putting in 30 years at Intel.
Maritz will remain on the VMware board, and Gelsinger will join it.
In a press release, Maritz made it clear that he believes VMware is being left in good hands. He also referred to the "extraordinary opportunity to help customers transform IT and deliver fundamentally more value to the businesses they serve" during his run, and went on to praise Gelsinger, who is known as being a hands-on techy leader, and COO Carl Eschenbach, who was recently promoted to COO after being one of four co-presidents named in February, 2011.
"Pat, with his deep passion for technology and track record, will complement the strong management team that is already in place at VMware," Maritz said.
During his tenure at EMC, Gelsinger was senior VP and co-general manager of Intel's Digital Enterprise Group, which is the company's largest business group, accounting for more than one half of Intel's annual revenue. With Gelsinger at the helm, the group was responsible for Intel's enterprise products, including PC clients, server, embedded, communications, virtualization and storage products.
Noting that he has been working with VMware for 10 years, Gelsinger was quick to endorse VMware's master plan, declaring his support for the company's development of software-defined datacenters, which, he said, "will be built by combining software with standardized hardware building blocks."
Tucci also took the opportunity to announce VMware's preliminary second quarter results, including record quarterly revenues of approximately $1.123 billion, up 22 percent over Q2 2011. Addressing Maritz, he said, "I want to personally thank and congratulate Paul for all he's accomplished over the past four years helping transform VMware from a technology leader in virtualization to an industry leader in cloud computing, and I'm excited that he'll now be working full time on these new opportunities."
According to Chris Wolf, research VP at Gartner, "Paul is moving to EMC, and his new role will be technology strategist. He is one of the most tech-savvy execs and one of the most visionary execs I have ever met. EMC obviously wants to be a major player in cloud computing, and Paul is the visionary who can take them there." Regarding Maritz's longer-term future at EMC, Wolf added, "Joe Tucci is getting up there in age, and he might want to be retiring soon, so perhaps this is a chance for Paul to be groomed as a possible successor as EMC CEO."
About the Author
Bruce Hoard is the new editor of Virtualization Review. Prior to taking this post, he was founding editor of Network World and spent 20 years as a freelance writer and editor in the IT industry.