Latest VMware Revolving Door News: Top Cloud Exec Leaves

Balkansky, a seven-year VMware veteran, served most recently as the company's senior vice president for cloud infrastructure products.

A VMware spokesperson confirmed to CRN that Balkansky left VMware sometime last month, and his position is now held by John Gilmartin, who prior to his promotion served as vice president of products for VMware’s storage business.

[Related: VMware CMO Latest -- And Biggest -- Exec To Leave For Cloud Rival ]

The VMware spokesperson, in an emailed statement, wrote, "During his more than seven years at VMware, Bogomil Balkansky has been instrumental in driving key parts of the company’s strategy, including helping to establish VMware’s ubiquitous vSphere franchise and leading significant growth in the cloud infrastructure and management businesses. Bogomil has been a driving force behind VMware’s product efforts since the day he started working here, and we thank him for his contributions."

GigaOM reported Monday that Balkansky may have joined former boss and VMware founder Diane Greene at her as-yet secret new startup.

Balkansky joins a long and growing list of executives who have left VMware. But, despite the exodus, at least one solution isn't worried.

Keith Norbie, director of server, virtualization and storage for the Eastern U.S. at Technology Integration Group (TIG), a San Diego-based solution provider and VMware partner, said it is important to resist the temptation to view the executive departures at VMware as a negative.

Instead, Norbie said, changes like this are a normal process in the IT industry.

"No one is going to retire from companies like VMware, EMC or NetApp," he said. "People will leave, and companies will have to replace them, but this happens all the time. It's never about a single person or some 'stud' or start at a company."

Prior to Balkansky, the latest to leave VMware was former CTO Rick Jackson, who last week took over the chief marketing position at Rackspace.

Others who have recently left VMware include Scott Musson, previously senior director of global strategic alliances at VMware and now vice president of global strategic alliances at Red Hat; channel veteran Doug Smith, who is now vice president of global partner sales at Virtual Instruments; former CTO Stephen Herrod, who went to a venture capital firm; and former COO Tod Nielsen, who last month joined startup cloud application developer Heroku as CEO.

Other VMware execs, including former President and CEO Paul Maritz and former channel chief Scott Aronson left VMware for Pivotal, the big data analytics startup formed by VMware and parent company EMC.

A company's strength comes from a broad base of customers and employees, Norbie said. "There will always be new people coming in," he said. "Sure, we will miss the old guys. But at one time they were the new guys. We need to take a deep breath and give the new guys a chance."

PUBLISHED JULY 15, 2013