Virtualisation specialist VMware’s CEO and co-founder Diane Greene was ousted by the firm’s board this week. The word is that VMware chairman (and EMC CEO) Joe Tucci didn’t exactly see eye to eye with Greene.
It’s rumoured that Tucci believed the firm needed someone with experience of taking firms ‘to the next level’ and that the founder should step aside and take a different role at the company she co-founded — when she refused, it’s reported, he had her sacked… [click continue reading for more]…
So who does Tucci bring in to replace Greene (who he believed lacked the experience to keep VMware on its growth trajectory)? Paul Maritz. Maritz’s credentials? Errr, he was founder and CEO of that massive technology powerhouse, Pi Corporation.
Pi who? Well may you ask. Because Pi Corporation hadn’t actually brought any products to market when it was acquired by — you guessed it — EMC.
Before it was bought, Pi Corporation had said it was “working on” some products. How big was Pi Corp? Check out the biographies page: there’s only one entry — you guessed right again — Paul Maritz.
OK, so Maritz spent 14 years at Microsoft, and five years at Intel. But in terms of sitting in the CEO’s hot-seat or taking a firm from one stage of its development to the next, he has less experience than Greene herself, who was founder of video streaming company Vxtreme (sold to Microsoft in 1997) before she co-founded and ran VMware. And she had formerly held technical leadership positions at Silicon Graphics, Tandem and Sybase.
Still, she’s got nothing on the former CEO of Pi Corporation, right Joe?
