Puppet hires president from VMWare, revamps name and logo as it preps 'for the next 10 years'

Puppet Labs has hired a senior executive of California-based VMware Inc. to carry out their planning and customer relationship product. Sanjay Mirchandani, who became the first puppet president and chief operating officer, had positions at EMC and Microsoft played before.





Puppetry has also introduced a new logo and drop "Labs" from its name, said it and how employees and customers relate to the business. It is the second name change for the 11-year-old company, known until 2010 as the reduction of laboratories.

These changes, as well as a pair of Thursday announced product updates puppet reflect the ambition to become a long-term, established business, as the founder and CEO Luke Kanies.

"All this is to prepare for the next 10 years," he said.

Puppet software helps large corporations manage their computer networks, computer design to operate according to specific instructions and inform the people in charge when something goes wrong. Customers include AT & T, Intel, Salesforce.com, Twitter and many non-technology companies with its own large computer systems.

Puppet private company does not report financial results, but Kanies said the company has increased by 70 percent last year. The company is preparing a public offering in savings this year, but put those plans on hold indefinitely in January despite the turmoil in financial markets.

Puppetry exercised an option in his seat in Portland is, however, increasing their presence by 50 percent. The company has 420 employees, 330 of them in Portland.

Mirchandani, president of the new puppet, was stationed in Singapore, where he was vice president and general manager of VMware for Asian markets. He said the decision to Portland reflects an interest in building on the success of puppets in the enterprise software market.

"There is much more we can do and that to me is the interesting part," he said.

VMware is one of the main financiers of puppets, investing $ 30 million in the company in 2013 and participate in two rounds. But Mirchandani said his decision to join puppet became independent of its role in VMware and VMware Kanies said was not involved in the hiring decision - quite the opposite, actually.

"We have worked very, very hard to make sure they are not aware of the talks until the documents were signed," Kanies said.

Puppet is one of the few technology companies Oregon attracted executives from the ranks of the biggest names in the technology industry. CFO Bill Koefoed was CFO of Microsoft longtime former leader Simon Hayes Citrix is ​​now vice president of corporate puppet and business development and vice president of product Casco Jamie came to Evernote.

Besides being the name of the company, puppets is the name of a management tool open source computer networks. marionette business offers additional software to automate and manage complex changes in computer systems, changes that would otherwise be expensive or impossible to implement manually.

Puppet software is part of an ecosystem of interconnected software, he said, and Puppetry - the company, which is - wants the new name to reflect its role in the integration of these tools.

It is understood?

"Since there is no confusion, confusion that is already there," Kanies said. "It gives us the opportunity to go directly to the confusion."

Disclaimer: This article has been updated to clarify its description of activity puppets.