VMware’s Board of Directors announced that it has made a change in the leadership of the company with the departure of Diane Greene as President and CEO. VMware’s Board of Directors has appointed Paul Maritz as President and CEO of VMware effective immediately. Maritz was also named to VMware’s Board of Directors.

“As one of the founders and the leader of VMware, Diane guided the creation and development of a company that is changing the way that people think about computing. The Board thanks her for her considerable contributions to VMware and wishes her every success in the future,” stated Joe Tucci, Chairman of VMware’s Board of Directors.

Tucci continued, “VMware is in a tremendous position to extend its lead in the virtualization market. VMware’s Board of Directors is very pleased to be able to appoint an executive with Paul’s experience and track record to lead VMware to its next stage of growth and development. Paul is a leader in the software industry. He has decades of experience building one of the greatest franchises in software history, Windows. Paul was instrumental as part of the core executive leadership team in building much of Microsoft’s success.”

Paul Maritz retired from Microsoft in 2000, after 14 years there. During this period Paul managed the development and marketing of many of the company’s major products, including such major releases as Windows 95, Windows NT, Database, Tools and Applications.

In 2003, Paul founded Pi Corporation, a startup software company focused on building Cloud-based solutions for new ways of doing personal information management. Pi Corporation was acquired by EMC in February 2008, and Paul became President of the EMC Cloud Division.

VMware expects to announce earnings for the quarter ended June 30, 2008 as scheduled on July 22, 2008 at 2pm PDT. On that call Paul will make observations about the second half of 2008. While VMware is not updating guidance for Q2, we expect revenues for the full year of 2008 will be modestly below the previous guidance of 50% growth over 2007.