VMware CEO Paul Maritz out amid company reshuffle rumors
Paul Maritz, who has been at VMware for four years, is out as chief executive and will be replaced by Pat Gelsinger, chief operating officer of EMC, which owns the market-leading virtualisation company.
It's not clear where he's heading to next, but his impending departure was rumoured throughout Monday.
In a mix of "what we don't know" versus "what the word is on the street," here's the roundup of what could be coming next:
CRN cites multiple sources that Gelsinger will take VMware's chief executive's role, while Maritz will retain the same job title as chief executive of EMC, the parent company of VMware. This seems to tie in with news way back that EMC chief executive Joe Tucci would retire by 2012. However, Gelsinger was touted as one of Tucci's possible replacements. Should Tucci leave before Christmas, the timing is a touch off considering Gelsinger's elevation to the executive's chair at VMware.
TechCrunch ran with a rumbling that Maritz could take on the top-spot at Cloud Foundry, the VMware-born platform-as-a-service that has seen huge popularity among developers.
GigaOm --- not wanting to add to the confusion --- said VMware is mulling making Cloud Foundry a wholly owned subsidiary of EMC that could see a distinct push to pool together VMWare's existing cloud services to take on Amazon, Google, and Microsoft in the cloud service space.
This could see Greenplum and Project Rubicon incorporated part of the wider spin-off to take on the infrastructure-as-a-service side of things. GigaOm isn't so sure Maritz would lead the effort, however.
Will Maritz stay or will he go? It's not even clear if EMC has a plan yet.
Image credit: CNET.