VMware Hybrid Cloud Chief Fathers Departs, Two VPs Tapped To Co-Manage The Service

VMware's top cloud computing executive, Bill Fathers, is leaving after a three-year run, the Palo Alto, Calif.-based virtualization vendor said Wednesday.

Fathers has been leading vCloud Air, VMware's hybrid cloud service, which has struggled to gain market share because of a lack of key features and competition from Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure. VMware has laid off much of the vCloud Air staff and seen several top executives depart in recent months.

VMware has named two vCloud Air vice presidents, Allwyn Sequeira and Laura Ortman, as co-general managers, a VMware spokesman told CRN.

"Bill Fathers has made a personal decision to leave VMware, but we are still committed to vCloud Air," said the spokesman. Fathers couldn't be reached for comment on his future plans. Fortune on Fathers' departure from VMware.

Fathers joined VMware in March 2013 shortly before it launched vCloud Air, which was initially called vCloud Hybrid Service. The offering was aimed at stemming the tide of VMware customers using AWS, but a lack of pay-as-you-go pricing and the ability to sign up with a credit card led to sluggish sales.

Sources told CRN last August that on developing new features for vCloud Air. In October, when VMware parent EMC hatched a plan to combine its Virtustream business with vCloud Air in a cloud joint venture, Fathers was moved to a "strategic advisory role" and wasn't part of it.

But the Virtustream-vCloud Air joint venture, unveiled shortly after didn't go over well with VMware investors, and VMware pulled out in December. After that, Fathers resumed his old role as head of vCloud Air.

Despite the challenges, VMware is still plugging away with vCloud, pitching its disaster recovery and data center replacement and extension capabilities. And while VMware still isn't sharing revenue figures for vCloud Air, bookings for its vCloud Air network of service provider partners grew 25 percent year over year in its most recent quarter.

VMware insists that vCloud Air offers a better price/performance ratio than rivals Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, and has .

Fathers is the latest of several top VMware executives to depart over the course of the past year, a list that includes Chief Technology Officer Chief Operating Officer and , VMware's top software-defined networking executive.