Paul Maritz exits CEO job at VMware, to be replaced by EMC’s Pat Gelsinger

Paul Maritz is reportedly out as the chief executive of virtualization software firm VMware. After four years at the helm of VMware, Maritz is expected to be replaced by Pat Gelsinger, chief operating officer of EMC, the enterprise storage giant and parent company of VMware.

Tech journal CRN cited multiple anonymous sources for its report on Monday. The report said it is unclear if Maritz will take another position within EMC or if he will leave the company.

Maritz is reportedly a candidate to lead Cloud Foundry, the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) division started at VMware. VMware is considering making Cloud Foundry into a wholly owned subsidiary of EMC. Maritz served from 1986 to 2000 as a top executive at Microsoft and a member of the company’s top management team. During his tenure, Maritz became famous in the antitrust investigation of Microsoft for reportedly saying that Microsoft would “cut off Netscape’s air supply” during the browser wars. He was also credited with originating the phrase “eating your own dogfood,” or convincing customers your product was real by using it yourself.