Last August, Paul Maritz handed the VMware CEO job over to Pat Gelsinger in a symbolic ceremony during VMware's annual customer conference, VMworld.
At the time, the announcement that Maritz was leaving shocked the tech world. He had built VMware into one of the most significant tech companies in the enterprise market.
And the change in leadership was odd, too. Maritz and Gelsinger were sort of changing seats. Gelsinger had been the No. 2 guy at VMware's parent company, EMC. Maritz was going to EMC to take on a No. 2-ish role, called "chief strategist." Months later, EMC said that Maritz would become the CEO of a new big data cloud 1,400 employee spinoff called Pivotal.
Word around the Valley was that Maritz, 58, was being primed to be the next CEO of EMC when EMC's current CEO, Joe Tucci, retired, which he was scheduled to do in December. Tucci changed his mind and has now postponed retirement indefinitely.
But the real reason Maritz left VMware was that he wanted to retire, a VMware employee told us. Tucci enticed him to keep working by dangling the prospect of a new spin-off, this employee said.
Unless Maritz has a chance of heart, he won't be interested in the EMC CEO job when Tucci does finally decide to go. So if Gelsinger does well at VMware, he's looking like the frontrunner.
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