VMware Hires Ex-SAP Exec to Head End User Computing Business

VMware (VMW) reached into SAP’s (SAP) executive ranks to nab Sanjay Poonen, a 20-year IT industry veteran who’s been the visible leader of the developer’s mobility and Big Data analytics initiatives, to run its End User Computing business unit as executive vice president and general manager.

Poonen, whose background reads like an IT who’s who with executive roles at Symantec (SYMC), Veritas and Informatica (INFA) following software engineering stints at Microsoft (MSFT) and Apple (AAPL), is tasked with handling strategy, products, engineering and delivery across all of VMware’s end user computing solutions.

Boiled down to the basics, his job will be to get IT pros to use VMware’s desktop virtualization technology, a task that Boaz Chalamish, who has been at the company since 2009 and headed the End User Computing unit for the past two years, served notice internally last May that he would relinquish his role this month in favor of the venture capital business, according to VMware.

"Sanjay brings a wealth of software industry experience that will be key to VMware’s success as we drive further growth in our end user computing business,” said Pat Gelsinger, VMware chief executive.

“As VMware continues its strategic focus on the software-defined data center, hybrid cloud and end user computing, we continue to strengthen our executive bench. We believe Sanjay is a distinguished leader whose expertise will be invaluable as we continue delivering the products and solutions customers need to enable a more secure and mobile workforce.”

Right at the top of reasons as to why Poonen’s hiring is important to VMware is the virtualization vendor is staking a portion of its growth strategy on the End User Computing group—which also houses cloud storage and application management—along with software-defined data center and the hybrid cloud. Even though VMware refrains from breaking out the unit's revenue in its financial reporting, the company has allowed its growth is in the mid-teens compared to last year.

Poonen said he took the job for the opportunity to command the end user computing market.

“VMware is uniquely positioned to help customers thrive in the era of mobile, social and cloud computing,” he said. “VMware has made tremendous progress in helping customers connect end users to their data, applications, content and desktops with enterprise-class control and security. I am excited to join the VMware team at this critical time in the industry to help accelerate our momentum in end user computing.”

Poonen is VMware’s second notable executive hire in the last week. The company also landed Chuck Hollis, EMC’s (EMC) former CTO, as chief strategist for its storage and application services (SAS) business unit.