VMWare ousts founder

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ahpYslwsz.vs&refer=home

by wmorein • 18 years ago

35 27 18 years ago

bloomberg.com

davidw• 18 years ago

She was just featured in the most recent Economist:

http://www.economist.com/people/displaystory.cfm?story_id=11...

aggieben• 18 years ago

Wow. The interesting part of this story is that VMWare was founded by a woman. Fascinating.

defen• 18 years ago

Even better - take a look at http://www.vmware.com/company/leadership.html. One of the co-founders, Edward Wang, "also helped to neutralize the infamous Internet Worm virus by discovering and describing one of its key mechanisms."

wallflower• 18 years ago

Pretty exhilarating technical prose:

"With Microscope and Tweezers: An Analysis of the Internet Virus of November 1988"

http://www.mit.edu/people/eichin/virus/main.html

"The Internet Worm Incident Technical Report"

http://homes.cerias.purdue.edu/~spaf/tech-reps/933.pdf

akd• 18 years ago

Best to call her the "co-founder." She's the non-technical head. The technical co-founder is her husband, Mendel Rosenblum, who created the first robust implementation of x86 virtualization.

Quite impressive that these two have been together so long without the business partnership or marriage falling apart.

astine3• 18 years ago

I suspect it bound them together actually. When a couple shares its labour it can become a important part of the relationship. Also, since they're husband and wife, I suspect that they combine their incomes, and so that partially deals with the money issue.

bayareaguy• 18 years ago

I'm pretty sure people who know her from her UCB days (she was peripherally involved with Stonebraker's research) would say it's a mistake to call Diane "non-technical".

augustus• 18 years ago

Its a sad day when the founder is ousted. I wonder why Vmware is in trouble. I can't imagine it is because of Greene.

I think virtual machine technology has great potential.

maximilian• 18 years ago

"Trouble" in the crazy stock market sense. They are not reaching "growth targets", which means she isn't pushing hard enough for growth. In reality she's probably a great boss, but just not cut out for running a public company owned by another company.

I'd feel bad for her, but I'm sure she has plenty of money. She apparently loves windsurfing, so they should just move back to Hawaii and have fun. Her picture looks like she's in her 50s, so she should just retire early and have lots of fun in the sun.

ibsulon• 18 years ago

It's a recession, and a lot of companies are waiting on their capital improvements right now. This one surprises me in how impatient they're being, or there's something else going on.

aaronblohowiak2• 18 years ago

Yea, being somewhat below 50% growth in sales for a year is "Trouble".

mtw2• 18 years ago

projections for 2008 was +50% growth. vmware didn't manage that, but it's not a reason to oust the ceo.

this is a highly political move

babul• 18 years ago

Probably due to the inroads made by KVM and the like.

aaronblohowiak2• 18 years ago

MS's free as in beer virtual server, perhaps?

wmf3• 18 years ago

VMware has been skimming the cream off the virtualization market and making enormous profit in the process, but that can't continue forever. Soon they must choose between sticking with the small but high-margin enterprise consolidation business and growing with lower margins.

astine3• 18 years ago

Wow. This going to come back to slap EMC in the face, just like what happened back with Moshe Yanai. It looks like the EMC management can't retain it's most valuable employees.

wmf3• 18 years ago

Can't retain? It looks like Greene was fired. If they wanted to retain her, they would have.

astine3• 18 years ago

Which makes it even worse.

nailer3• 18 years ago

What happened with Moshe Yanai? I can't find much on Google.

wmf3• 18 years ago

Nov. 2001: "Moshe Yanai, VP of engineering at EMC and the inventor of its Symmetrix flagship storage array, has received a cut of Symmetrix sales for over a decade. And they maintain that the arrangement has thwarted EMC’s ability to create new hardware for a tougher market. ... EMC denies rumors that Yanai is set to leave the company." http://www.byteandswitch.com/document.asp?doc_id=9644

Dec. 2001: "the chief engineer would no longer oversee the company's hardware division and, instead, would become an adviser to CEO Joseph Tucci. ... Yanai was pushed aside and really sidelined." http://www.bizjournals.com/boston/stories/2001/12/24/newscol...

2002: "XIV is led by Moshe Yanai, one of the key architects of data storage systems and instrumental in the development of EMC's Symmetrix and DMX product lines throughout the 1990s." http://www.xivstorage.com/company/company_background.asp

2008: XIV bought by IBM to compete against EMC.

VMWare ousts founder

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