Greene is Out; What’s Next?

Don’t sell Maritz short. He was one of Microsoft’s best, they may be in a different position today if he had stayed. The risk to VMWare is that they lose Rosenblum and some of the engineering prowess. but Maritz probably still has an axe to grind with Microsoft and is an excellent choice to lead the company forward.

Scott - I did a post on this, check it out, and if you think it’s useful for the dialog, link away.

Timing on these things is always tricky. The VMware board surely has visibility that suggested that a change was needed

If not now - then when? If they didn’t like the direction on a given issue (perhaps the competitive strategy), delaying what is inevitably a difficult move only delays - and perhaps puts them in a more difficult situation later.

What’s most important is that the innovation and development continue - and that’s up to all the people at VMware - like any great company, it’s not about one or two people when you get to be a certain size, it’s about the “corpus” of the corporation.

Still - every corpus has hearts and brains - critical organs. I’m not minimizing the huge impact this may have.

If this is a critical time for VMware, then why not change leadership now? Sure, it looks a little chaotic and there will be some negative fallout. However, VMware can’t afford to be uncertain about its leadership in these highly competitive times. If EMC and the rest of the board had questions about whether Greene was the right person to lead the company, then it might have been wise to replace her before the going gets even tougher.

If it was a financial decision, i.e. 2nd quarter shortfall, the firing has caused the stock to drop 25% which I think is more than what the shortfall will be.

Also, I agree with you that the big risk now is losing Mendel Rosenblum, who I think VMware needs to hold onto. I am not sure about the people you deal with at VMware, but the ones I talk to are not happy and have not been happy for awhile now.

This just seems like a really dumb move and one that takes Microsoft’s toehold entry into the virtualization market and turns it into a foothold (one that MS would eventually have anyway, but way to speed it up).

For what it’s worth - and this is the honest truth - I’ve asked it several times from the exec teams - and it has been 100% confirmed - this doesn’t change the arms-length partnering EMC/VMware model - one iota.

As an EMCer, I hate when EMC folks imply anything more than “we think we’re the right choice for VMware infrastructure on our own merits, and here they are…”.

Customers - if an EMC person implies ownership - just ask them to sell you a license - that will put a stop to that, since it immediately exposes that they can’t

Now, Scott - as far as EMC and VMware partnering up in the field, man, I think that’s great - where we can help them, and they can help us - and most importantly we can help the customer together, that’s not evil - that’s good business sense and goodness for the customer. Arms length = EMC, HP, HDS, IBM, Dell, etc are treated equally, not that EMC and VMware can’t partner.

In fact, as we train our folks (up to 300 VCPs on staff and rising) - to some degree this is natural (and something I would want to foster). That’s free open market competition.

Now, if there’s something bad going on - man tell me, and I’ll do my best to put a stop to it.

Additional data

http://www.virtualization.info/

I didn’t put enough emphasis on the prior entry. There are internal emails from tucci and maritz at the site, along with a lot more info than I’ve seen anywhere else.

Of all the people I know at Vmware and EMC, not many are happy to see here leave(even the emc’ers).

After all, it’s like Michael Dell, Steve Jobs, etc….They all have one thing in common. They built up a company, then made the mistake of giving power to a board, who turned around and ditched them.

Unfortunately, within a couple years, all of those companies were plummeting. I hope this is not the case, but what has tucci brought to the table? It was a husband and wife combo that built it, nurtured it, and directed it. It wasn’t a paper pusher from EMC or from Microsoft. Can you imagine how bad a pile we’d be in if M’soft or EMC either one had been calling the shots? EMC can’t step right most of the time, and Microsoft…well, that one doesn’t even need qualification.

Hey Scott,

Why not release her earlier? Well, that assumes that the board was planning this for a while. Maybe the change came a little more rapidly than we think. Or, maybe they wanted to be thorough in their hunt for a replacement or were waiting to see if the numbers would improve. Perhaps they struggled with the possible loss of the Chief Scientist or whether it was the right time to change corporate culture.

It’s always a little sad to see a founder get the boot, but it happens all the time. It’s the risk a founder takes when agreeing to an acquisition or taking the company public. You can’t have your cake and eat it to. You can’t want all the benefits of an acquisition or an IPO without giving up anything. And what you give up is control. In the private world, the owner is the final answer. But once you go public, the CEO has bosses: the board and the shareholders. Greene knew this.

Sometimes founders are so close to the company that they can’t see it for more than what they know it as. Sometimes it takes a fresh set of eyes to envision something bigger and to take the company beyond its current boundaries.

As for the email on virtualization.info, I don’t know…some of it seems fabricated. I would find it ironic if VMware engineers are so “pro-FOSS” when VMware products are the most expensive in the game.