EMC & VMware to launch Paul Maritz-led unit dedicated to ‘big data’ & cloud

After several rumors floated earlier this week, VMware and parent company EMC have officially announced the spinoff of a new cloud and big data unit called The Pivotal Initiative, led by former VMware CEO Paul Maritz.

VMware said The Pivotal Initiative will be a “virtual organization” made up of 600 VMware employees and 800 EMC employees, and it will formally launch in the second quarter of 2013, as outlined in a blog post on VMware’s console blog. The unit will be comprised of employees from VMware’s Cloud Foundry and vFabric, along with EMC’s Greenplum, Cetas, and Pivotal Labs groups. With all these combined, that’s a lot of fire power to dedicate to cloud and big data.

The companies said they created the new unit to take advantage of growing opportunities in the booming cloud sector:

We are experiencing a major change in the wide scale move to cloud computing, which includes both infrastructural transformation and transformation of how applications will be built and used based on cloud, mobility and big data. There is a significant opportunity for both VMware and EMC to provide thought and technology leadership, not only at the infrastructure level, but across the rapidly growing and fast-moving application development and big data markets. Aligning these resources is the best way for the combined companies to leverage this transformational period, and drive more quickly towards the rising opportunities.

VMware and EMC did not reveal the exact structure of the new organization and said they will not do so until the second quarter of 2013. Thankfully, VentureBeat guest columnist and CloudBeat advisor Ben Kepes has outlined what the organization should look like, based on details from a well-placed source.

Paul Maritz photo via Robert Scoble/Flickr