Ahead of the long-expected Dell’s spin out, VMware has appointed Rangarajan (Raghu) Raghuram as its new CEO and member of the Board of Directors, effective June 1, 2021.

Pat Gelsinger, who led VMware since 2012, was named Intel’s chief executive in February this year.

Raghuram, 58, currently holds the position of executive vice president and chief operating officer, products and cloud services at VMware.

Since joining VMware in 2003, Raghuram has helped steer the company’s strategic direction and its technology evolution throughout VMware’s history. He helped grow the core virtualization business, drove VMware’s software defined data center strategy, constructed and guided VMware’s cloud computing business and SaaS transformation efforts, played a pivotal role in the company’s M&A strategy, and has been key in driving partnerships with Dell Technologies, hyper-scalers and other strategic partners.

“I am honored, humbled and excited to have been chosen to lead this company to a new phase of growth. We have enormous opportunity, we have the right solutions, the right team, and we will continue to execute with focus, passion, and agility,” said Raghuram.

VMware also announced that Sumit Dhawan has been named President, leading all go-to-market functions including Worldwide Sales, Worldwide Partner and Commercial Organization, Customer Experience and Success (CXS), Marketing, and Communications.

Dhawan currently serves as Senior Vice President and Chief Customer Officer at VMware where he has helped design the business strategy for emerging multi-cloud and subscriptions offerings, transforming how VMware’s customers can consume VMware services.

Sanjay Poonen, currently Chief Operating Officer, Customer Operations, has made the personal decision to leave VMware after his 7 years at the company, most recently leading Customer Operations and prior to that leading End-User Computing.