Virtualisation trailblazer VMware caught market watchers off-guard last week by replacing Diane Greene as its chief executive. The move comes as VMware faces intensifying competition, most notably from Microsoft.
VMware announced the departure of Greene, one of its co-founders, amid signs of slowing growth and rumours of a fallout between Greene and Joe Tucci, chief executive of EMC, which owns 86 per cent of VMware.
In getting rid of Greene, VMware’s owners have tacitly acknowledged that the
company faces new challenges, Gartner’s Phil Dawson said. “Diane was a good
chief executive in the good times, but is she the best person to lead the
company during a wobble?” he remarked.
Dawson also noted that customers may be uneasy about the prospect of EMC taking
a more hands-on role in running the firm.
“Is EMC getting tighter control over VMware during a tight spot – and is this
a good thing?” he asked. “As virtualisation technology commoditises into the
hardware, the value moves into the management tools. VMware needs to
differentiate itself in the management tools space, because
it will be under price pressure to compete.”
Greene’s exit also comes hot on the heels of Microsoft making its Hyper-V
hypervisor generally available. “VMware is now in a different market,” said
Butler Group analyst Roy Illsley. “With Microsoft in the market, VMware needs to
make sure it doesn’t end up like Novell in the 1990s.”
Illsley said VMware needs to change from a technology-led firm into a
marketing-led one.
“When battling Microsoft you need to have a strategy to market your solution
in different areas,” he added. “VMware is becoming relatively isolated in the
industry. It needs to build partnerships.”
Greene has been replaced by Paul Maritz, a former Microsoft executive who was
responsible for the development of Windows 95 and NT.
In related news, experts warned last week that the recent growth in
virtualisation uptake could be held back by a shortage in capacity planning
skills.
Jonathon Priestley of BMC Software said, “Predicting storage, network and
processor utilisation for a bunch of apps running on a single piece of hardware
is complex.”
Enterprise adoption of virtualisation continues apace 07 Jul 2008
Microsoft has unleashed its server virtualisation technology 26 Jun 2008
Uptake of the software giant’s Hyper-V hypervisor is expected to be strongest among smaller companies, where its affordability is most likely to give it an edge over more sophisticated rivals 04 Jul 2008
HP and VMware have expanded their strategic collaboration relationship 20 Jun 2008
Improvements in virtual machine security should help to increase virtualisation uptake 13 Jun 2008
Communications vendor announces new architecture to compete with IBM and HP 17 Mar 2009
vSphere platform styled as "the first cloud operating system" 21 Apr 2009
Joe Tucci and Paul Maritz open EMC World 2009 with buoyant predictions for enterprise cloud computing 19 May 2009
Virtual Matrix Architecture designed to be highly scalable and self-managing 14 Apr 2009
Virtualisation giant buys web application firm SpringSource for $362m for new Platform as a Service strategy 11 Aug 2009
E.ON and ScottishPower receive funding to help complete design and development studies 12 Mar 2010
But the Commission remains confident bloc will exceed target to generate a fifth of energy from renewables by 2020 12 Mar 2010
Industry urges legislators to move bill to the president's desk as quickly as possible 12 Mar 2010
More news
From hydropower hot spots to record-breaking Texan winds, we run down the top stories from the past week 12 Mar 2010
Few debates cast the UK's business and political community in such an unedifying light as the never-ending row over skills.... 12 Mar 2010
Christian Kjaer, chief executive of the European Wind Energy Association, argues that a supergrid is essential to EU efforts to cut carbon emissions 11 Mar 2010 More in-depth
Post your comment
Send an email to the Business Green editor at feedback@businessgreen.com
