VMware Names New CEO

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It’s official. On September 1st, Pat Gelsinger will become the new CEO of VMware amid an executive reshuffling that places the outgoing CEO, Paul Maritz, at EMC as its Chief Strategist.

On Tuesday, EMC — VMware’s corporate parent — announced the move amid reports that VMware and EMC are embarking on new efforts to capitalize on the sizzling cloud computing market. Those efforts, according to GigaOM, could include a spinoff focused on cloud solutions.

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Lending weight to the possibility, EMC CEO Joe Tucci said in a statement, “Today we are witnessing an extraordinary transformation in the IT industry unlike anything we have seen before – a major shift to Cloud Computing, Big Data applications and delivering IT-as-a-Service.”

Shaking up the company’s management is necessary to align the company’s business strategy with these market realities, according to Tucci. “To capitalize on this tremendous opportunity we are positioning our executive talent so that we can benefit from their exceptional professional strengths with the goal of further advantaging EMC and VMware to deliver long-term value to our respective shareholders,” he added.

Pat Gelsinger is currently the COO of Information Infrastructure Products. Come September, he will head up VMware and take a seat on its board of directors. At the same time, outgoing VMware CEO Paul Maritz will start his job as Chief Strategist for EMC, a position that reports directly to CEO Tucci. Maritz will retain his spot on the VMware board of directors.

“With these changes, David will assume responsibility for EMC’s Information Infrastructure business, Pat will now lead Cloud Infrastructure at VMware, and Paul will look across our technology strategy with a particular focus on Big Data and the next generation of cloud-oriented applications that will be built on top of these foundations,” stated Tucci.

EMC also announced that its current CFO, David Goulden, was promoted to president from executive vice president and has been named EMC’s COO. CEO Joe Tucci also reiterated his commitment to “lead this great company as Chairman and CEO through at least 2013.”

The new appointments were announced as EMC prepares to release its second quarter financial results on July 24th. EMC used the occasion to offer a sneak peak, reporting preliminary earnings data that point to a 10 percent year over year increase in revenues for a record $5.31 billion.

Pedro Hernandez is a contributing editor at InternetNews.com, the news service of the IT Business Edge Network, the network for technology professionals. Follow him on Twitter @ecoINSITE.