The unexpected exit of Diane Greene, co-founder and CEO of VMware, is one of the biggest events of the year. This is end of an era. VMware is at such a big stage in virtualization market because of Diane Greene.
Diane is considered by many as one of the greatest visionaries of last 20 years and a great leader. Many of us might not know about her but a quick reading would be good enough. Read the following link to know about Diane Greene.
http://www.networkworld.com/includes/ads-pre.html
I too was one of those who did not know about Diane Greene and VMware but the recent event created enough curiosity in me to dig further.
I found that the departure of Diane is not a small event but would make a big impact. It has already made a big negative impact on the company’s share price. The share price has already moved down by a big margin in two days. While reading, I also learnt that VMware IPO was one of the most talked IPO in recent past (only second to Google IPO).
Diane is technology freak and gave birth to a new wave called virtualization by starting VMware in 1998. VMware’s first product “VMware workstation” was almost magical. It was amazing to run an operating system on a virtual machine. It was not heard before. VMware went ahead with their further offerings called GSX and ESX servers which consolidated on server consolidation and service isolation.
By bringing such products, VMware became not only the front runner in the virtualization market but became so big that it had more than 100000 customers and nearly 14000 partners which made it one of the fastest growing companies on the globe.
Now with the time, competition increases in every business and VMware too started to feel it. Few major competitors of VMware in virtualization market are Microsoft, Sun and Citrix.
In technology space when luxury becomes the basic need you never know? In last few years virtualization has become such a buzz word that every company wants to virtualize. Linux now has a virtualization support in the name of KVM (Kernel Virtual Machine). Intel and AMD made sure that hardware platforms are compatible and even thinking further whether virtualization can become part of the platform itself. This new thinking is so radical that would change the face of virtualization at all.
Microsoft is already planning to ensure that its recently launched Hyper-V hypervisor is part of Windows server 2008. And who is not aware of aggressive marketing campaigns of Microsoft.
Oops, you might be thinking that I am digressing from the topic. But I thought to give you a brief of Virtualization market before coming back to current event.
Now Greene is removed from VMware’s top post at a time when the company needed her most. She, being the technology champion, could find ways to consolidate company’s position in such a competitive world.
She has been replaced by a business person, Paul Maritz who spent most of his time with Microsoft and was crucial contributor in the aggressive marketing of Windows 95 and NT. I would not talk about his accomplishments in detail J
EMC has around 85% of the stake in VMware therefore it can take such aggressive decisions but I seriously doubt whether such moves ever help. If we agree with what market forces are talking about, VMware (or Greene) was not able to take certain forward looking decisions because the decision makers (board of directors) were not willing to cooperate. Diane was looking for a free hand while EMC chief Joe Tucci was against such freedom.
I have few doubts in the entire event
- Is it justified to remove somebody like Diane who is not just a founder of the company but ensured that VMware is such a big name in the market?
- Is it justified to replace her by a person who is new to virtualization market?
- What would be morale of VMware’s executives who are so closely associated with humble natured Greene?
- Did this change happen on the personal grounds?
- Would there be further consolidation between EMC and VMware?
- EMC and Microsoft maintain a healthy relationship. EMC even won the 2008 Microsoft partner of the year award. Did this partnership trigger this move?
We have not heard anything from Greene or her husband on the turn of events and when they share their side of story (if they?) we would get more clarity. Eagerly waiting!
I would like to end my thoughts on a funny note. When such an event happens anyone can quickly refer to the following joke
Joke:
The new CEO is given three letters by his ousted predecessor, and told to open them in times of crisis. Six months later, when things are not falling in place, new leader opens the first letter which reads 'blame everything on your predecessor'. So he issues a press release denouncing the former director and disaster is averted.
The following six months brings more problems, so he reads the second letter which tells him to reorganize the company, and he promptly fires a lot of staff making shareholders happy again.
A year later analysts and press are still demanding his blood, so he opens the last letter and reads 'time to write out three letters'.
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