VMware Cloud Pioneer Maritz Cut Loose

As CEO of VMware, Paul Maritz led the company into the world of private clouds, transforming a largely hypervisor-driven concern into a true platform player. And for this Maritz was replaced by one of its own, Pat Gelsinger, who served as COO at VMware parent EMC. My guess? EMC wants to exert more control over the largely independent VMware.

Others believe Maritz was replaced because he failed to keep Hyper-V at bay. The Microsoft hypervisor is absolutely on the move.

If anyone tells you that Maritz did a poor job, read them this: First, VMware is making gobs of money, and the latest quarter, announced alongside Maritz's departure, was a stunner, with a record-breaking $1.1 billion in revenue. That's a run rate of moer than $4 billion a year.

More than that, Maritz led a technical charge any geek would be proud of. Under his leadership, the company moved from a company with a hypervisor surrounded by some good management tools to a true platform, one that is arguably the leader not just in virtualized datacenters but in true private cloud creation.

Martitz isn't leaving entirely. He'll be on the board of the directors and serve as chief strategist. Often positions like the latter are just to soothe investors or the feathers of the exec himself. Give it six months and we'll see which is the case with Maritz.

Posted by Doug Barney on 07/24/2012 at 12:47 PM