Management Toolkit

VMware snaps up former Borland CEO

Charles Cooper CNET News

Published: 07 Jan 2009 12:46 GMT

VMware on Tuesday named Tod Nielsen to be its chief operating officer, his sixth different company since the millennium.

Nielsen had been Borland's chief executive since November 2005. Before that, the held executive roles at Oracle, BEA Systems and Microsoft. He also served a stint as chief executive of Crossgain, before a non-compete agreement with Microsoft forced him to step aside. BEA later acquired Crossgain.

In the role of VMware's chief operating officer, a newly created job, Nielsen will be reporting to chief executive Paul Maritz, his former colleague — and boss — at Microsoft, where he worked for a dozen years.

Maritz said in a statement that the appointment would free him up to concentrate on other areas while Nielsen would focus on business, marketing and operations. "Having worked closely with Tod in the past, I know that we will work effectively together and complement each other," he said.

While at Microsoft, Nielsen played a minor role in the months-long courtroom drama sparked by the US Justice Department suing Microsoft for antitrust violations.

One of 2007's hottest IPOs, VMware now faces increased competition in the virtualisation market from Microsoft, IBM, Xen and Oracle, as well as the overhang of a deepening recession.

Separately, Borland announced on Tuesday that it was cutting its workforce by about 15 percent, or 130 employees. It also said that preliminary fourth-quarter revenue would fall between $38.5m (£25.7m) to $40m. The company previously had forecast full year revenue of $180m to $200m. Erik Prusch was named acting president and chief executive to replace Nielsen; he had been chief financial officer.