Cisco and EMC have picked up industry veteran Michael Capellas to lead all aspects of the Virtual Computing Environment (VCE) coalition and has also been appointed to the role of CEO of Acadia, a Cisco-EMC joint venture with investment from Intel and VMware.
The VCE coalition with Acadia is focused on accelerating the transformation of the data centre, helping organisations reduce costs and quickly and securely deploy new business applications through private cloud computing.
In his role as the VCE coalition leader, Capellas, will drive customer and partner adoption of the coalition’s IT offerings including Vblock packages. Capellas will also lead Acadia’s ‘build, operate and transfer’ business model designed to enable a set of partners to accelerate customer build-outs of private cloud infrastructures. He will report to Joe Tucci, EMC chairman and CEO, and John Chambers, Cisco chairman and CEO, and the Acadia Board.
Capellas has experience in executive and technology leadership roles. Most recently, he was the chairman and CEO of First Data, an electronic commerce and payment processing company. Prior to First Data, Capellas served as MCI’s president and CEO. He was president of HP after merging Compaq with HP.
At Compaq, he started out as CIO, then COO and later became chairman and CEO. Prior to Compaq, he spent 20 years in technology positions for Oracle, SAP and Schlumberger.
John Chambers, chairman and CEO of Cisco, said: Michael’s appointment to lead the VCE coalition and his role as CEO of Acadia underscores our long-term commitment to deliver a seamless engagement model for customers and partners to access the advanced technologies, support and services they have come to expect from Cisco and EMC.
“As we work together with VMware and other key partners to help our customers realize the potential of the private cloud, we couldn’t be more confident in the value of the VCE coalition with a leader of Michael’s distinction at the helm.
