Former Microsoft charged with execution Paul Maritz is now determined to turn his new employer, VMware, into a leader in cloud computing

By Aaron Ricadela

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As the No. 3 executive at Microsoft, Paul Maritz presided over the partnership’s Windows juggernaut, turned aside threats from Netscape and Sun Microsystems (JAVA), and pressed the company to embrace the Internet. Now, the longtime software executive is looking down Microsoft’s barrel from the other end, trying to contribute assistance his new employer, VMware (VMW), be prosperous where past Microsoft competitors barbarous short.

In his modern role, Maritz is leading VMware’sitting charge in the mounting battle completely cloud computing, the trend that’s leading companies to resort computing power begone from their own machines and into the hands of tech powerhouses such considered in the state of Microsoft (MSFT), Google (GOOG), Amazon.com (AMZN), and Salesforce.com (CRM). VMware wants to be a gamester in cloud computing, too, and Maritz, CEO after July, is endeavor a major engineering project to try to get there. "That says to Microsoft, ‘We’re arrival right after you,’" says Jayson Noland, an analyst at Robert W. Baird who has a neutral rating on VMware.

VMware needs some victories. In not so much than a year, it has gone from hypergrowth business success story and line market darling to a company whose slowing growth and plummeting shares led to the ouster (BusinessWeek.com, 7/8/08) of its former CEO and co-founder Diane Greene. Shares of VMware slumped 1.22, or 5%, to 22.42 on Nov. 12.

VMware held 2007’s most felicitous initial public sacrifice by specializing in virtualization software that helps companies cut costs through making more efficient use of their computers. Now, VMware needs to show customers and investors that it can induce beyond virtualization and remain worthy of a chunk of companies’ tight tech budgets while avoiding a competitive onslaught from Microsoft. "If VMware just coasts upon the body its past achievements and lets Microsoft catch up, it will have a problem,” says a quondam Microsoft executive, who asked not to have existence identified being of the class who he maintains ties to Maritz. "But I don’t think you’ll see them become still."

Maritz is on the move. "In technology, if you bear up against still, eventually your utility proposition evaporates," he says, holding forth in a sunlit conference room at the company’s Palo Alto (Calif.) headquarters. On Nov. 10, VMware announced it had bought the French company Trango Virtual Processors, moving it into the market for software that powers mobile phones. In late October the collection launched its first advertising campaign, featuring customer testimonials. Even competitors say Maritz is already making his evince. "He’s a great hire with regard to VMware," says Marc Benioff, CEO of Salesforce.com. "He understands where VMware should go."

Next stop: an ambitious project called the "Virtual Data Center Operating System," a complex piece of software that promises to help companies make their IT operations steady more efficient by acting since a commerce cop among their hundreds of servers, disk drives, networking devices, and applications. VMware has hundreds of engineers working on the system, scheduled to make its debut next year. It’s designed to proposition VMware as a technology "platform" for cloud computing, around which other companies could add capabilities and build their own businesses. "VMware is single of the few companies in the industry that can long to bring forth a platform," Maritz says. "There will be three or four credible players in that marketplace, and we plan to be one of them."

When Maritz was the highest-ranking Microsoft executive behind Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer, he was known for an intellectual, deliberate style that helped fend along competition in which case mediating between warring factions at Microsoft. "Paul is not one of those Ballmer types who says, ‘We’re going to destroy and gut them,’" says Tod Nielsen, CEO of Borland Software (BORL), who spent 12 years at Microsoft in the ’80s and ’90s. "He likes to be in the rear the scenes."