VMware boss Pat Gelsinger tackles life after Dell buyout

Pat Gelsinger is not your usual CEO of Silicon Valley. A committed Christian who was almost to the church rather than the technology, which emits 40pc of their salary, pray and sing hymns in his office in California trip at the airport and decided early in life never read the newspaper every day until I had read the Bible first.


Today, however, everything that everyone wants to hear how the CEO of VMware, the market capitalization technology group $ 32bn (£ 26.2bn) US is Michael Dell.


epónima manufacturer Dell private equity supported by computer just paid $ 67 billion for EMC, the US group that owns 80pc of VMware, and the following 10,000 men in the conference VMworld Europe in Barcelona this month flooded interest in how the duo gel.

Gelsinger, after all, is a technocrat who has worked for 30 years at Intel, reaching CTO, while the spirit of Dell founded the company famous PC company in his college dorm in Austin, Texas.

"We get very well," insists Gelsinger, 54. "We just had our first board meeting with Michael as the new president who presides my advice and I would say that in general, while it is still early and I do not think none of us say we think all over again, all the signs are encouraging.

"We have committed $ 1 billion in synergies, so we have to go and start building organizations to materialize." This precaution discreet approach to Gelsinger characterized. More Bill Gates, Larry Ellison, who fell to the ground, attractive and polite.



What are your impressions of your new boss so far? He is pleased that Dell has declared its support for the "ecosystem" VMware reseller partners even greater US company VMworld conference in Las Vegas.

He thinks Dell was impressed with 25,000 intense episode of crowd - more than double the participants to the annual shindigs EMC or Dell. There are many Dell to get your head around. EMC is an unusual company with a portfolio strategy parts companies supply property including VMware and Pivotal, a spinoff jointly owned with Microsoft, Ford and General Electric and chaired by Paul Maritz, a former Microsoft executive and veteran of VMware .

"Michael has bought into this whole strategy," Gelsinger said. "Certainly it includes a software company like VMware is a different society, a different culture.

"People are different software people making the supply chain and materials. There is no advantage in a software company than people. This is a key to managing a company like ours look and see us as a very successful company.

"It gives us the space and support to go out and execute what we do. And it has much to do with the merger of Dell and EMC. There are 140,000 people there to assemble the product lines merge and create organizations".

VMware's name stands for "virtual machine software" - technology that essentially allows companies to package their data in fewer server computers. The company recently struck major alliances with leading cloud computing Amazon and IBM. its listing after making preserved.

"I am pleased to see shareholders every 90 days," Gelsinger smiles. However, shares of VMware almost halved from $ 80 to a minimum of $ 43 after the announcement of the transaction. "That was a very painful process," he said.

"Clearly there is concern about whether Dell could make a successful software company." There were questions about values ​​track that was part of the takeover and the implications of that. As with any large acquisition, there were also concerns about whether the deal would be. "


There were also questions about the activity of VMware, because the addresses presented in income last year was less than Wall Street expected. However, the share price has increased as companies have come together to complete the transaction.

Gelsinger "We were able to indicate on the market consistent and independence of VMware ecosystem and some of the new products and cloud strategy deployed have helped answer some of the concerns," he said.

"With stocks now around £ 77, which are not yet trading at a multiple of the software we should have, so we're not quite through the fog. But we have come a long way and I think that 'there is considerable potential growth. "

Gelsinger, who chairs the Bay Transformation with Christ, a group designed to provide the "spiritual and social" change in the area of ​​San Francisco, VMware is clearly with the same kind of missionary zeal.

He speaks of "digital transformation" and how some of the largest companies in the world simplify their IT infrastructure to innovate at a faster pace. With the machine powered devices expected to break human efforts focused on 2019, he believes that many companies are still fully prepared for the imminent explosion of the "Internet of things".


He also argues that the technology sector is still in its teenage years "" with an enormous tension between control and freedom. Half of the largest technology companies US have disappeared in time 10 years because of these and other difficulties, he predicted.

He will not name any, of course, but Nokia, BlackBerry and Yahoo are three brands of IT whose star has dimmed considerably since predicted big industry slaughter in the Daily Telegraph there three years, while British chip designer took ARM team and of course EMC.

VMware, however, has been an excellent investment for EMC. Founded by Diane Greene and Mendel Rosenblum her husband with colleagues in California in 1998, was acquired by EMC, six years after £ 625m.

In 2007, EMC launched the company on the New York Stock Exchange, which retains a stake of 80pc. Maritz replaced as CEO Greene, quadrupling revenues of $ 4.5 billion. Gelsinger then change to succeed Maritz EMC in 2012.

VMware now has 400,000 customers, 19,000 employees, 2015 revenues of $ 6.6 billion and 120 locations worldwide, including its headquarters in the UK in Frimley, Surrey. Gelsinger was raised on a farm in Pennsylvania.

His father was one of nine children, while his mother was from a family of 11 and jumped the last year of high school at age 17 to take a scholarship to study electronics at Lincoln Technical Institute in its original state.

His faith increasing clarity. a weekly Bible study was conducted for 16 years and served as a Sunday school teacher, while his philanthropy supports medical aid, church planting organizations, educational work and an orphanage he and his wife Linda helped build in Nairobi.

Intel, where he entered high school, often worked 80 hours a week, prompting complaints from the payroll was working too much overtime.

To resolve this problem, for a period of their married life, he and Linda has designed a system by which scored two points to get home before 17 hours, one point if before 18:15 to zero thereafter and least one point remote weekends.

Even wrote about it in a book entitled Balancing family, faith and work. "I have written three books and now I'm working in my room," smiled Gelsinger. He is one of those labors of love. "Since the merger, of course. Watch this space.