Raghu Raghuram (VMware)
VMware has promoted its COO of products and cloud services, Rangarajan (Raghu) Raghuram, as new CEO, effective 1 June, following the departure of former CEO Pat Gelsinger earlier this year.
“After a thorough and thoughtful search, the board concluded that Raghu is the best person to lead the company as CEO, because he embodies our innovative culture, represents our values, and has a clear vision for VMware’s future,” said Paul Sagan, VMware’s lead independent director. “We also want to thank Zane Rowe for his leadership as Interim CEO and the crucial role he plays continuing as CFO.”
At the same time, the company's current COO of customer operations, Sanjay Poonen, has made the personal decision to leave VMware after seven years.
"I extend my warm congratulations to Raghu on his promotion to CEO and know he will take the company to new heights," Poonen said. "I will be cheering on the company’s success, as I embark on my next adventure."
Raghuram spent more than four-and-a-half years as executive vice president and COO of products and cloud services, joining VMware in 2003 as director of product management. Since then, he has helped grow the core virtualisation business, driven VMware’s software defined data centre strategy and constructed and guided VMware’s cloud computing business and software-as-a-service (SaaS) transformation efforts.
“Throughout his career, he has led with integrity and conviction, playing an instrumental role in the success of VMware,” chairman of the VMware board of directors Michael Dell said of Raghuram. “Raghu is now in position to architect VMware’s future, helping customers and partners accelerate their digital businesses in this multi-cloud world.”
Raghuram has also played a pivotal role in the company’s merger and acquisition strategy, and has been key in driving partnerships with Dell Technologies, hyper-scalers and other strategic partners.
“VMware is uniquely poised to lead the multi-cloud computing era with an end-to-end software platform spanning clouds, the data centre and the edge, helping to accelerate our customers’ digital transformations,” said Raghuram.
“I am honoured, humbled and excited to have been chosen to lead this company to a new phase of growth. We have enormous opportunity, we have the right solutions, the right team, and we will continue to execute with focus, passion, and agility.”
Amid Raghuram’s appointment, VMware also named Sumit Dhawan as president, leading all go-to-market functions including worldwide sales, worldwide partner and commercial organisation, customer experience and success (CXS), marketing, and communications.
Dhawan currently serves as senior vice president and CCO at VMware where he has helped design the business strategy for emerging multi-cloud and subscriptions offerings, transforming how VMware’s customers can consume VMware services.
The leadership shuffles come as VMware revealed its revenue for the first quarter of fiscal 2022 is expected to increase 9.5 per cent to US$2.994 billion from the first quarter of fiscal 2021. The combination of subscription, software-as-a-service (SaaS) and licence revenue is expected to jump 12.5 per cent to US$1.387 billion.
