More changing of the guard among the leadership ranks at VMware. CMO Rick Jackson is on his way out of the enterprise software company. He’s stepping down as CMO moving into SVP role, although he’ll remain CMO until a replacement is found. According to an internal note provided to TechCrunch, “Rick Jackson will be transitioning to a new role as SVP of Global Enablement. Rick remains CMO until a replacement is hired and transition completed.”
We’d been hearing other details this week that we weren’t able to confirm, although this latest development shows that they were not entirely off the mark, either. Jackson had told some staff earlier in the week that he would be leaving his role because the new CEO — Pat Gelsinger, who joined in September 2012 to replace Paul Maritz — wanted his CMO to be “10 feet down the hall”. Jackson recently moved from the Bay Area — VMware is headquartered in Palo Alto — to Austin, Texas.
These two aren’t the only c-level executives to leave VMware. The virtualization giant also lost its CTO Steve Herrod, who left to join General Catalyst in January 2013. Further back, in April 2012, VMware’s CFO Mark Peek left for Workday.
Jackson, who has been in IT for 25 years, has been with VMware since 2009 and has also had roles at BEA Systems and Borland Software.
We’ve reached out to the company and will update this post with more details as we learn them.
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