EMC and VMware play management musical chairs

Paul Maritz, Pat Gelsinger and David Goulden in exec shuffle

EMC is shuffling its top management pack as it seeks to position itself and its VMware subsidiary as kingpins of the cloud computing and big data space.

VMware chief executive Paul Maritz is being replaced by EMC bigwig Pat Gelsinger, effective from 1 September, the storage giant confirmed, in line with press speculation originating from a report by CRN US on Monday.

Maritz will move in the other direction, joining EMC in the post of chief strategist, where he will focus on big data and the next generation of cloud-oriented applications.

Meanwhile, EMC chief financial officer David Goulden will complete the game of musical chairs by stepping into a role broadly equivalent to Gelsinger's after being appointed as EMC president and chief operating officer.

The announcement came as EMC unveiled preliminary second quarter revenue of $5.31bn (£3.4bn), a 10 per cent hike on last year.

EMC chief executive Joe Tucci (pictured) said: "Today we are witnessing an extraordinary transformation in the IT industry unlike anything we have seen before - a major shift to cloud computing, big data applications and delivering IT-as-a-service.

"To capitalise on this tremendous opportunity we are positioning our executive talent so that we can benefit from their exceptional professional strengths with the goal of further advantaging EMC and VMware to deliver long-term value to our respective shareholders."