EMC CTO Hollis Takes Chief Strategist Post at VMware

Chuck Hollis, storage giant EMC’s (EMC) global marketing chief technology officer and an 18-year company veteran, has pulled up stakes and headed to virtualization kingpin VMware (VMW) to take on chief strategist’s duties for software-defined storage and other goodies.

Hollis, known as a prolific and edgy blogger, disclosed his move on his blog, of course, writing on Aug. 1, “As of today, I'm now an employee of VMware—with a new role and a tantalizing set of new challenges and opportunities. And I couldn't be more excited.”

Hollis, noting his consistency at EMC had left him a little bored, said he was drawn to a new VMware storage and application services (SAS) business unit, led by Charles Fan, who he has known for “many years.” The unit’s focus is a set of some of the hottest topics around—software-defined storage, availability and data protection, application services for cloud apps, Big Data infrastructure—really, will there be anything else?

As for exactly what he’ll be doing, Hollis allowed it will be a little of this and a little of that—“My title is necessarily vague ('Chief Strategist') as I want the flexibility to move around from topic to topic as needed,” he said.

Aside from VMware affording him the opportunity to expand his horizons, Hollis said he was ready to jump on the software-defined storage bandwagon with the virtualization vendor.

“I take it as an article of faith that software-defined data centers are quickly becoming a reality,” he wrote. “If this part of the IT industry is going to transition, which company is best positioned? VMware. Also being a storage guy, I can't deny that storage and related disciplines will move to a software-defined model before too long. It's inevitable from where I sit.”

Hollis paid suitable homage to his time at EMC, acknowledging “hundreds of friends and colleagues here,” and EMC’s majority shareholder position in VMware, but said, “mentally — yes, I'm leaving. Make no mistake, now that I'm a VMware employee, there's a completely different set of perspectives and priorities in play as compared to my previous vantage point at EMC. VMware necessarily looks at the world quite differently than EMC, and I find that appealing.”

He appears to have jumped right in, inviting attendees at the upcoming VMworld in San Francisco Aug. 25–29 to join him in software-defined discussions.

“At VMworld, I'll be helping the team to host a small number of NDA-style feedback sessions at, all around VMware's near-term plans with software-defined storage,” he wrote in his first post-EMC blog on Monday.