VMware Confirms Gelsinger To Take Over As CEO

VMware confirmed after the New York markets closed on 17 July that which had been reported the previous evening: chief executive Paul Maritz is moving on and that an executive from the parent company’s front office, EMC Chief Operations Officer Pat Gelsinger, will replace him at the helm in Palo Alto.

Gelsinger (pictured at left), who joined EMC in 2009 after a 30-year career as one of the top execs at Intel – including five years as CTO – takes his new position on 1 September. He also will join VMware’s board of directors.

‘Big shoes to fill’

“It’s been a pleasure to work with the best IT leadership team in the industry,” Gelsinger said on a conference call to analysts and journalists to discuss the management changes.

“Having worked with Paul for nearly 30 years now, he leaves very big shoes to fill, and my commitment is to work my very hardest to fill them. It’s an honor to take the baton from Paul at VMworld (set for the end of August in San Francisco) for this next lap of the journey.”

Maritz, who has supervised a highly successful four years at the world’s largest virtualisation software provider, remains on the VMware board and ostensibly will become EMC’s chief executive-in-waiting. In the meantime, he will work as a “technology strategist” within the EMC corporate empire.

“This will be a full-time position, a job that can be done from anywhere,” Maritz said on the conference call. “This transition also frees up my time to think about some of the interesting things that can be done on top of this new foundation of cloud infrastructure. There are ways to deliver business value in ways that have not been possible before.”

Tucci to stay with EMC for now

EMC’s president, chief executive and chairman of the board Joe Tucci, 65, said on the call that he intends to stay on in his current positions “at least through 2013”.

“I’m feeling energised, and as long as the board thinks I add value, well, I feel good about staying,” Tucci said.

Tucci had told an interviewer a year ago that he would call it quits in 2012. Later, he told investors and analysts during the company’s quarterly earnings call in January that EMC’s board of directors had asked him to stay on into 2013. “Besides, I’m having too much fun doing this job,” he said on that conference call.

So Maritz apparently will have to wait his turn if he wants the top job at EMC, which has a market cap of $48 billion (£30bn) – $38 billion more than NetApp, the second-largest independent storage marker-and annual revenues of $20 billion.

Tucci has supervised EMC during a highly successful 11-year run as chief executive and has been board chairman for the last six years. EMC has become the world’s largest independent storage and security company during his tenure and owns far-and-away the most market share in storage hardware and software.

VMware also preannounced its second-quarter 2012 earnings on 17 July – a week early.

The wholly owned EMC subsidiary turned in record quarterly revenues of $1.123 billion, up 22 percent from a year ago. Guidance from the company for the quarter had been in the $1.1 billion to $1.12 billion range.

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