VMware's board of directors named Raghu Raghuram as its new CEO effective June 1, 2021. It also appointed Sumit Dhawan as president, and it said that Zane Rowe will continue as chief financial officer.
Raghuram is currently the chief operating officer for Products and Cloud Services at VMware.
“I am thrilled to have Raghu step into the role of CEO at VMware,” said Michael Dell, chairman of the VMware board of directors, in a statement. “Raghu is now in position to architect VMware’s future, helping customers and partners accelerate their digital businesses in this multi-cloud world.”
The role of CEO at VMware was vacated by Pat Gelsinger in February when he left to become CEO at Intel. Zane Rowe has been VMware’s acting CEO since Gelsinger’s departure.
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Raghuram has been with VMware since 2003. He helped grow the core virtualization business, drove VMware’s software-defined data center strategy, constructed and guided VMware’s cloud computing business and SaaS efforts and played a role in the company’s M&A strategy. As CEO, Raghuram will also join VMware's board of directors.
For his part Raghuram said today, ““VMware is uniquely poised to lead the multi-cloud computing era with an end-to-end software platform spanning clouds, the data center and the edge, helping to accelerate our customers’ digital transformations.”
Sumit Dhawan, who currently serves as chief customer officer, has been named president. In his new role he will lead Worldwide Sales, Worldwide Partner and Commercial Organization, Customer Experience and Success, Marketing and Communications.
Sanjay Poonen, who is currently chief operating officer for Customer Operations, will leave VMware after seven years with the company.
Other corporate matters
Dell Technologies owns an 80.6% equity interest in VMware, but it’s in the process of spinning that off to form two standalone public companies when the transaction closes, probably during the fourth quarter of 2021.
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At the transaction closing, VMware will distribute a special cash dividend of $11.5 billion - $12 billion to all VMware shareholders, including Dell Technologies. Based on Dell Technologies' current ownership in VMware, Dell Technologies would receive approximately $9.3 billion - $9.7 billion and intends to use the net proceeds to pay down debt.
Upon completion of the spin-off, Michael Dell will remain chairman and CEO of Dell Technologies, as well as chairman of the VMware board.
VMware also today issued preliminary first quarter fiscal 2022 results, predicting revenue to be $2.99 billion, an increase of 9.5% from the first quarter of fiscal 2021.
The combination of Subscription and SaaS and license revenue is expected to be $1.38 billion, an increase of 12.5% from the first quarter of fiscal 2021.
The company will report its earnings on May 27, 2021.