How Far We’ve Come

August 18, 2015 Paul Maritz

sfeatured-buildOver the past 35 years, I have been fortunate enough to have had a ringside seat at three major transitions in the computer industry: first the birth of the Software & PC era, then the Internet and Web era, and now the Cloud era at Pivotal. During this time I have had the privilege of working with incredibly smart and interesting people, and have seen the enormous impact that technology can have on the world. The latest wave of change that is blowing through the world is perhaps that most interesting of all, as the world is moving beyond the automation of what was previously done with pen and paper, giving birth to new capabilities and ways of relating to people that we have not seen before—not just quantitatively but qualitatively too.

It was the opportunity to be a part of this new wave and help a broad range of businesses thrive in the new software-dominated world that attracted me to Pivotal. Pivotal is tapping directly into the need for all business in some important sense to become software businesses and learn how to do modern, agile, cloud-oriented development. What is fascinating about this challenge is that this is not just a technology challenge, but also a people and culture challenge—and the fact that Pivotal can speak to both of these needs is what is making it unique and valuable in customer’s eyes. In just two years, our global community of 1700+ Pivots has established a thriving business that is experiencing a tremendous amount of growth. We are working hand-in-hand with customers as they establish new centers of innovation, and our new open source based subscription cloud platform (Pivotal Cloud Foundry) has crossed $100 million in annual bookings run-rate. This speaks both to the value that customers place on our Pivotal Labs team not only do work for them, but with them, allowing them to see first-hand how modern product development can be done, and the value that they see in breadth, quality and usefulness of the software platforms that we have been developing. Moreover I am particularly proud of how Pivotal has embraced open source and is leaving a legacy of “how to do it right” in terms of cooperation, contribution and governance.

At this point, I am very pleased to announce that Executive Vice President of Products and R&D Rob Mee, who founded Pivotal Labs, around which we have built the broader Pivotal, has been promoted to CEO of Pivotal. There are very few people on the planet who possess the depth and breadth of Rob’s experience as a business executive and technologist. Rob is the ideal person to take Pivotal through the next stage of its journey. With Rob’s promotion, I will become Executive Chairman of Pivotal, and will continue to be actively involved with, and supportive of, Pivotal. I have every confidence that with Rob’s background, experience and character, the transition will be seamless.

My time as CEO of Pivotal has been one of the most important and rewarding experiences of my career. I would like to thank everyone who has been on the journey with me, and I look forward to partnering with Rob and the global community of Pivots to continue to use technology in new ways and to help our customers do amazing things for the world.

About the Author

Paul Maritz

Paul Maritz serves as Pivotal’s Chairman of the Board. In 2013, Paul led the founding of Pivotal, having previously served as Chief Strategist of EMC and CEO of VMware. During his tenure at VMware, he led transformation of the company from a leader in virtualization to an industry leader in cloud computing. Maritz remains a member of VMware’s board of directors.

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