Nutanix snagged yet another former VMware executive for its leadership team, appointing Shyam Desirazu as Head of Engineering. It also hired former Boomi executive Mandy Dhaliwal as its new CMO. Both will report to CEO Rajiv Ramaswami.
Desirazu is tasked with working with Ramaswami and the rest of Nutanix’s leadership team to evolve and execute on the company’s technology and platform roadmap. He is also responsible for its innovation strategy and R&D investments across the company’s portfolio of products.
In a statement, Desirazu indicated his perspective will include a strong focus on enabling multi-cloud deployments. “I believe that hybrid multi-cloud is the future and that Nutanix’s fast-moving culture of innovation is uniquely positioned to help customers navigate today’s cloud complexities, while deploying solutions that help to future-proof IT,” he said. “The opportunity to lead and build Nutanix’s engineering organization as the industry evolves towards this future is incredibly exciting.”
Nutanix’s new engineering chief most recently served as VMware’s VP of Engineering for VMware Cloud on AWS, leading a team of more than 500. And prior to joining VMware in 2018, he held executive engineering positions at BlueTalon (which was acquired by Microsoft in 2019), Panzura and Zynga.
Desirazu follows in the footsteps of Ramaswami, who joined Nutanix from his position as COO at VMware at the end of 2020. The move sparked a lawsuit from VMware, which claimed Ramaswami had violated his contractual obligations. VMware subsequently dropped the case in November 2021. At the time, Nutanix said it was pleased with the development, calling the lawsuit “misguided and inappropriate.”
New CMO Dhaliwal comes to Nutanix from software company Boomi, where she served as CMO since 2018. She also held CMO roles at Fugue and BlazeMeter (which was acquired by CA Technologies in 2016), a position as VP of Marketing at SOASTA (which was acquired by Akamai in 2017), and spent several years as Senior Director of Software Marketing at EMC Corporation (before it merged with Dell in 2016).
In its fiscal Q2 earnings report last month for the quarter ended January 31, Nutanix posted revenue which grew 19% year on year to $413.1 million and a net loss of $115.1 million which was an improvement from a net loss of $287.4 million in the comparable quarter of 2021. It now has a total of 21,400 customers, including 1,662 large customers with lifetime bookings of more than $1 million.