VMware recently named its long time executive Rangarajan (Raghu) Raghuram as the new Chief Executive Officer. He will replace Pat Gelsinger, who had moved to Intel. Further, Raghu will be a member of the Board of Directors of VMware, with effect from June 1. He is at present the COO of Products and Cloud Services, VMWare.
The news comes close on the heels of VMware COO Sanjay Poonen leaving the company. Sanjay has been instrumental in building VMware into a $1 billion business.
VMware has been on the lookout for a new CEO since Pat left the company in January this year to head Intel. Post which, Sanjay was expected to be shortlisted as a potential candidate for CEO of the company.
In addition to Raghu’s appointment, VMware also named Sumit Dhawan as its new President.
Dell spins-off VMware
In 2016, Dell acquired EMC (parent company of VMware) in a cash and stock deal worth $74 billion–the largest acquisition in the history of the tech sector.
Last April, Dell announced the spin-off of 81 percent of its stake in VMware to create two standalone companies. The deal is expected to be close in the fourth quarter of 2021. In an official statement, VMware said it expects to generate revenue of $2.994 billion in the first quarter of fiscal 2022, a 9.5 percent year on year growth.
Chairman of VMware Board of Directors and CEO of the parent company, Dell Technologies, Michael Dell, said: “Throughout his (Raghu’s) career, he has led with integrity and conviction, playing an instrumental role in the success of VMware. Raghu is now in a position to architect VMware’s future, helping customers and partners accelerate their digital businesses in this multi-cloud world.”
Tracing Raghu’s Journey
IIT-Bombay and The Wharton School alumnus Raghu joined VMware in 2003 as the Director of Product Management. Raghu switched about seven roles, holding management ranks in verticals, including the Datacenter and Desktop Platform Products, Product and Solutions Marketing, Server Business Unit, and Software-Defined Datacenter Division. Most recently, Raghu was the Chief Operating Officer of Products and Cloud Services.
For close to two decades, Raghu has been steering the California-based cloud computing and virtualisation tech company’s strategic direction and technology evolution. He has been pivotal in growing the company’s visualisation business, driving VMware’s software-defined data centre strategy, constructing and guiding VMware’s cloud computing business and SaaS transformation efforts. Additionally, Raghu has helped in the company’s Merger and Acquisition strategy, driving key partnerships with Dell Technologies.
What Raghu brings to the table
In an interview with a US-based media house, Raghu said, “We are hardware agnostic, cloud-agnostic, and we can focus on helping our customers run their applications and run their IT however they want to run it. We are providing the tools to help them build new applications faster, run them across all these locations, manage these applications, secure and protect them — that’s what we are trying to do in a nutshell.”
According to sources, VMware is already in talks with ecosystem vendors to form strategic partnerships that will assist the virtualisation company’s multi-cloud takeover.
Post the spin-off, VMware will find it easier to get into strategic partnerships with vendors. “What you should look for in the coming weeks, months and years, is that our partnership with the broader ecosystem is as deep and as strong as it is with Dell today,” Raghu added.
Raghu said: “VMware is uniquely poised to lead the multi-cloud computing era with an end-to-end software platform spanning clouds, the data center and the edge, helping to accelerate our customers’ digital transformations.”
VMware competes with Nutanix in the hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), virtualisation, IT automation and hybrid cloud management space. In a media statement, Raghu said what differentiates VMware from its competitor is its business initiative — to aid customers in their digital transformation journey. Raghu emphasised on how VMware’s offerings continue to remain unparalleled when it comes to helping clients moving to the cloud and securing their digital assets.
