VMware NSX Chief Casado Departs For Job At VC Firm, Says Dell-EMC Turmoil Wasn't A Factor
Martin Casado, VMware's top software-defined networking executive, dropped a bombshell Wednesday by revealing that he's leaving the company to join venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz.
VMware said Wednesday it has hired former Broadcom executive Rajiv Ramaswami to replace Casado as general manager and executive vice president of its Networking and Security business. Ramaswami has spent the past six years at Broadcom, and has previously held executive roles at Cisco Systems and IBM.
Casado said in a blog post that he'll be joining Andreessen Horowitz, Menlo Park, Calif., as a general partner starting April 1. He said he'll continue working with VMware as an external strategic adviser.
"So, there it is. I am becoming a VC," Casado said in the blog post.
Casado's departure comes during a tumultuous period for VMware, which is seen as the centerpiece of Dell's $67 billion bid to acquire parent company EMC. VMware shares are down nearly 40 percent since the deal was announced in October. In an interview with Re/code, which was first to report on Casado's departure, he insisted that the Dell-EMC turmoil wasn't a factor in his decision to leave.
Casado has spearheaded efforts to pitch VMware's SDN technology, called NSX, as a network security technology. That appears to be paying off, as VMware said last month that NSX is on a $600 million bookings run rate, compared with $200 million at this time last year.
While Casado is one of the most well-respected executives in the tech industry, his departure won't dim the prospects for NSX, said Bill Schell, president of August Schell, a Rockville, Md.-based VMware partner.
"The product is solid and the future remains brilliant," Schell told CRN. "Our deployments are going extremely well and our opportunities for new implementations are accelerating."
Andreessen Horowitz was an early investor in Nicira, the SDN startup Casado co-founded and which VMware acquired for $1.2 billion in 2012. Before Nicira, Casado was a researcher at Stanford University and created the OpenFlow protocol, a key enabling technology for SDN.
Casado said in the blog post that Andreessen Horowitz approached him about becoming a general partner focused on the enterprise space, an offer he found too enticing to refuse. "Given my familiarity and history with the firm, and how rare these opportunities are, I knew this was my chance. So I accepted," he said in the blog post.