CNN Money published a very long, well-written and interesting article inside Fortune magazine about Diane Greene and how she got involved in VMware fortune, becoming one of the most powerful woman in the world (#22 actually).
Besides the enjoyable story, there are a couple of very important points that emerge. One confirms why EMC is not pushing VMware brand despite the acquisition happened years ago:
…The deal worked because after buying VMware, EMC has mostly left it alone. The reason: It had to. Greene says she realized only after the deal was announced that a close association with EMC carried enormous risks for VMware.
The penny dropped when she called Bill Zeitler, an IBM senior hardware executive, and told him of the sale. Zeitler politely hit the roof. Like HP, Dell, and others, IBM had been enthusiastically selling VMware together with its products. IBM is a key VMware partner – and bitter competitor of EMC.
Greene and Tucci quickly crafted rules of engagement that keep the companies separate. Most important, they agreed to prohibit EMC’s aggressive salesforce from selling VMware, which would have given EMC a weapon against its competition but hurt VMware…
The second and most important point seems to confirm tensions between EMC and VMware:
…The biggest headache just might be EMC. The two companies continue to have as little to do with each other as possible. Greene and her acolytes butt heads frequently with EMC’s senior executives, who remain annoyed they cannot benefit more directly from owning VMware by selling its software. Tucci manages to keep a tenuous peace, but even his praise hints at the tension. “The No. 1 item that makes anyone successful is passion,” he says. “Never bet against a person with passion. She [Greene] has an intense desire to win.”
Greene herself doesn’t talk much about EMC; she points out that she ceased to be an EMC officer when VMware went public. Still, EMC has the right to approve all major transactions and expenditures. The companies tussled, for example, over the cost of VMware’s new Palo Alto headquarters, designed to be environmentally light-footed…
Read the whole article at the source.
Before this article, The Register reported rumors about VMware and EMC tensions as well.