Juniper CIO Bask Iyer to Become Next VMware CIO

VMware did not wait long to appoint a replacement for its former CIO Tony Scott, who left the role earlier this month to join President Barack Obama’s administration as U.S. CIO.

The new VMware CIO is Bask Iyer, who will be leaving his role as senior vice president and CIO of Juniper Networks, another Silicon Valley giant. VMware made the announcement Tuesday afternoon PST.

While networking is not VMware's primary business, it is becoming an increasingly important play for the company, which has built formidable presence in the software defined networking market for data centers and telcos. This focus has made it a major competitor to Juniper, which has been trying to grow its data center networking business and building out SDN capabilities.

Iyer has been at Juniper since July 2011, overseeing the technology and business operations around business transformation, business services, IT, real estate, and workplace services. Prior to that, he was CIO at Honeywell, a U.S.-based multinational conglomerate that produces everything from home appliances to military equipment.

Before Honeywell, Iyer spent nearly 6 years as CIO for consumer healthcare R&D at the British pharmaceuticals giant GlaxoSmithKline.

Once he joins about one month from now, Iyer will lead VMware’s IT team that managed critical systems that support the Palo Alto, California-based company’s global business operations. He will report to VMware CFO Jonathan Chadwick and become one of the company’s executives.

“Bask has extensive experience as a strategic and operational leader,” Chadwick said in a statement. “He will play a pivotal role in leading VMware and helping our customers as we deliver the reality of the software defined enterprise.”

Scott, the previous VMware CIO, was tapped by the White House as a replacement for former U.S. CIO Steve VanRoekel, who left in September 2014 to join the Ebola response team of the U.S. Agency for International Development as chief innovation officer.