Mayer is New Yahoo CEO, Shakeup at VMware

Marissa Mayer

Marissa Mayer of Google on stage at Velocity 2009 in San Jose, California (Photo by James Duncan Davidson via Flickr).

Here’s our review of some of this week’s noteworthy links for the data center industry:

Yahoo! appoints Marissa Mayer as CEO.  Yahoo (YHOO) announced that it has appointed Marissa Mayer as President and Chief Executive Officer and Member of the Board of Directors effective July 17, 2012. Mayer was Google's 20th employee and its first female engineer, climbing to her most recent post as vice president in charge of local and location services. She also told Fortune Monday that she is pregnant, due October 7. The move from Yahoo signals a renewed focus on product innovation to drive user experience and advertising revenue for one of the world's largest consumer internet brands.  "I am honored and delighted to lead Yahoo!, one of the internet's premier destinations for more than 700 million users," said Mayer. "I look forward to working with the company's dedicated employees to bring innovative products, content, and personalized experiences to users and advertisers all around the world."  "The Board of Directors unanimously agreed that Marissa's unparalleled track record in technology, design, and product execution makes her the right leader for Yahoo! at this time of enormous opportunity," said Fred Amoroso, Chairman of the Board of Directors.

VMware and EMC executive shake up.  Numerous sources are pointing to a CRN article reporting that Paul Maritz is out as VMware CEO, and is being replaced by Pat Gelsinger, president and COO of EMC. Speculation is that Maritz will replace EMC CEO Joe Tucci when he decides to retire. Maritz joined EMC after a career with Microsoft, and his software startup was acquired by EMC. Alternatively Maritz could head up a spin-off company that includes EMC assets like Cloud Foundry, Greenplum and Project Rubicon.

Cisco acquires Virtuata. Cisco (CSCO) announced that it has acquired privately held Virtuata. Milpitas, California based Virtuata provides capabilities for securing virtual machine level information in data centers and cloud environments. Together, Cisco and Virtuata will enable consistent and enhanced security for virtual machines allowing customers to accelerate the deployment of multi-tenant, multi-hypervisor cloud infrastructures. The Virtuata team will join Cisco’s Data Center Group led by David Yen, senior vice president, Data Center Group. This acquisition is highly complementary to Cisco’s vision of a unified data center that securely connects people and businesses with applications and data through virtual and cloud environments.