Paul Maritz Out As VMware CEO And Mentioned As Candidate For Top Spot At EMC Or Cloud Foundry Spin Off

Paul Maritz is out as the CEO of VMware and will be replaced by EMC COO Pat Gelsinger.

Maritz spent four years at VMware. It’s uncertain what he will do but rumors have swirled all day about about his departure.

CRN has a story that puts Gelsinger in charge of VMware with Maritz taking the top spot at EMC. VMware is a wholly owned subsidiary of the leading storage company based out of the Boston region.

My sources say that Maritz is also mentioned as a candidate to lead Cloud Foundry, the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) started at VMware. Cloud Foundry has had considerable growth since it started a year ago with its popularity as an open source developer friendly environment.

GigaOm reported today that VMware is considering making Cloud Foundry a wholly owned subsidiary of EMC. That has always been the hope of Cloud Foundry’s original developers. Greenplum and Project Rubicon, a joint venture infrastructure-as-a-service involving VMware and EMC, would also be part of the spin off.

But would Maritz lead that effort? GigaOm reports that potential successors include Tod Nielsen, co-president of VMware’s application platform business and Mark Lucovsky, vice president of engineering in charge of Cloud Foundry.

Maritz has roots in the open-source movement. He is a technologist who would like the challenge of developing Cloud Foundry as its own business.

His talent as a technologist led him to Intel where he developed tools for developers to build on the then new x86 platform. According to Wikipedia, he then moved on to Microsoft:

From 1986 to 2000 he worked at Microsoft, leaving as executive vice president of the Platforms Strategy and Developer Group and part of the 5-person executive management team. He was often said to be the third-ranking executive, behind Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. He was responsible for essentially all of Microsoft’s desktop and server software, including such major initiatives as the development of Windows 95, Windows NT, and Internet Explorer. While at Microsoft, Maritz was credited for originating the term “eating your own dogfood” also known as Dogfooding.

EMC CEO Joe Tucci is planning to retire. A successor has not been named. Gelsinger is not considered to be a replacement which opens the question about Maritz. Will he be named CEO of EMC? That’s the question of the day.