The Day VMware Decided Not To Go Greene
July 8th, 2008 | 
Author: In a shocking move today, VMware announced the replacement of CEO and co-founder Diane Greene with Paul Maritz. Maritz, formerly with Microsoft where he was responsible for the development and marketing of successful products such as Windows 95 and Windows NT until he retired in 2000, was also named to the VMware Board of Directors. Most recently, Maritz’s startup Pi Corporation was aquired by EMC in February 2008. Maritz joined EMC’s executive management team as President and General Manager of the Cloud Infrastructure Services Division at the time of the acquisition and has been in that role until now.
Here are some quotes from a few of the many reports and posts published today that summarize both positive and negative reactions to this news.
In a post by Andrew Schley Kutz on the Virtualization Pro Blog, Andrew speculates on a possible scenario that may have been the reason for this change:
“Although initially it was unclear whether or not Ms. Greene left on her own volition, at this time multiple sources are confirming that she was fired. Speculation says that her forced departure could be the result of her attempt to VMotion VMware from EMC to Intel, and the fact of the matter is that Ms. Greene’s tenuous relationship with EMC CEO Joe Tucci was well known.”
Alessandro Perilli of Virtualization.info also adds some interesting opinion in it’s post titled VMware loses its CEO:
“It’s clear that VMware is working to enter the cloud computing space, but replacing a highly successful CEO like Diane Greene doesn’t seem the best way to do that. Additionally, it’s odd that Maritz’s wikipedia entry is already updated with the new position while the official announcement didn’t provide any detail about the reasons behind such a sudden replacement or which kind of involvement Greene will have in the company in future.
It’s worth to highlight that the VMware’s Chief Scientist, Mendel Rosenblum, is also her husband. This replacement, if imposed by the parent company EMC, may have a huge domino effect on the whole VMware management team.”
Alessandro continues to update his post as more information is obtained.
On the other hand, Bernd Harzog writes about his personal history and experiences with Paul Maritz at Dabcc.com:
“I remember Paul Maritz as being a careful, deliberate, analytical and thoughtful member of that team. He was calm, mature, and lead with a steady hand on the tiller. I was a fan of his then, and I think that he might be exactly the right person to lead VMware through its competition with Microsoft and Citrix to the next level of growth.”
Finally, SearchServerVirtualization.com’s Bridget Botelho reports in the post
Six reasons Hyper-V will surpass VMware within 5 years (which is actually a reference to Joe Clabby’s Six Reasons Why Microsoft’s Hyper-V will Overtake VMware to Become the Major Player in the x86 Server Virtualization Marketplace) that she believes today’s moves by EMC and VMware are the start of the ultimate downfall of the current virtualization market leader.
“Though VMware has the advantage of technologies like VMotion, to move live VMs, and all of the handy add-on management and infrastructure software integrated into VMware, Clabby said Microsoft’s management and infrastructure is far deeper.
Microsoft’s Systems Center product portfolio inlcludes systems management tools like Configuration Manager; Operations Manager; Data Protection Manager; Virtual Machine Manager; System Center Essentials; Capacity Planner, and the list goes on, ad nauseum.
Besides all of those points, Microsoft is a $51 billion dollar software company and VMware’s revenue is just over $1 billion.
In short, given its deep pockets, large installed base and virtualization strategy, it is safe to say Microsoft will, once again, be laughing all the way to the bank.”
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