The Pivotal Initiative – Aiming for the PaaS Crown

Grazed from Sys Con Media. Author: Archie Hendryx.

If you were to ask EMC or VMware whom they consider their major threat and competition you’d be easily forgiven for being mistaken to think it was NetApp, HP or offerings such as Hyper-V. With many terming us to now be in the third era of corporate computing, with mainframe and the client/server being the first two, the current cloud era has undoubtedly been spearheaded by the likes of Google, Amazon and Facebook. It is here where EMC and VMware face their biggest challenge of remaining relevant and cutting edge in a market that demands automation, simplicity and speed of deployment.

Despite major marketing campaigns of "Big Data" and "Clouds" that have seen airports littered with exorbitant amounts of posters and adverts, as well as numerous acquisitions of various companies that have extended already huge product portfolios, both EMC and VMware have struggled to release themselves from the shackles of being deemed just a Storage and Hypervisor company. So in light of this it’s no surprise to see both companies spin off a new and independent venture that will address this very challenge, namely the Pivotal Initiative…

With a promise of $400 million in investments and a 69 / 31 % split in ownership between EMC and VMware respectively, the Pivotal Initiative will be headed by none other than VMware’s ex-CEO Paul Maritz. At the time his stepping down from that position raised a few eyebrows and questions as to whether he was being demoted, prepped for early retirement or was just being pushed to make way for VMware’s current CEO, Pat Gelsinger. In hindsight one could easily see this now as a move that maybe Maritz himself initiated from his own recognition that VMware as a company was failing to transition yet alone be recognized as a PaaS organisation…

Read more from the source @ http://www.sys-con.com/node/2599482