VMware Sues Former Executive Who Left for CEO Job at Nutanix (bloomberg.com) 35
VMware said that one of its former top executives, Rajiv Ramaswami, violated his contractual obligations while being courted to be the chief executive officer of rival Nutanix, adding another dimension to a bitter rivalry between the two software makers. From a report: VMware's lawsuit against Ramaswami, who was named CEO on Dec. 9, was filed Monday in California state court in San Jose. The company accused its former chief operating officer of products and cloud services of meeting with Nutanix executives and board members while helping VMware craft a strategy and acquisitions road map. VMware, majority owned by Dell Technologies, said the executive's actions and knowledge of its plans has caused "irreparable injury." Nutanix, which wasn't named as a defendant in the suit, called the case "misguided" and said it's an attempt by VMware to hurt a competitor.
"We cannot unring the bell of that conflict that existed during that two-month period that he was engaged with Nutanix while involved in planning for us," Brooks Beard, a VMware vice president and deputy general counsel, said in an interview. "Through this lawsuit, we're hoping that we can find a way to protect VMware's rights and interests, steps that we would have taken, could have taken, had he alerted us of this conflict." The Palo, Alto-based software maker may seek to recoup its compensation to Ramaswami during the time period and wants to "meaningfully engage" with the executive and his new employer to ensure they won't use confidential VMware information to make competitive decisions, Beard added.
"We cannot unring the bell of that conflict that existed during that two-month period that he was engaged with Nutanix while involved in planning for us," Brooks Beard, a VMware vice president and deputy general counsel, said in an interview. "Through this lawsuit, we're hoping that we can find a way to protect VMware's rights and interests, steps that we would have taken, could have taken, had he alerted us of this conflict." The Palo, Alto-based software maker may seek to recoup its compensation to Ramaswami during the time period and wants to "meaningfully engage" with the executive and his new employer to ensure they won't use confidential VMware information to make competitive decisions, Beard added.
Acquiring talent should not be a crime (Score:4, Insightful)
In California non-compete agreements are generally not enforceable, although, as with all else under the laws, the devil is in the details. VMware will typically be required to show specific examples of actual harm rather than just general claims of possible future harm.
At this level of executive recruitment between such rivals I would expect both Nutanix and Rajiv himself were not exactly surprised at VMware's lawsuit. Let the billable hours begin (only the lawyers will be winners here).
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Let the billable hours begin (only the lawyers will be winners here).
Last time someone tried to pull some unenforceable, illegal shit on me, I refused to let their lawyer have contact information or the identity of my lawyer. Communication had to go through me, and I was able to rack up billable hours on their side, without incurring them on my side. Eventually, their client got sick of paying for their lawyer and caved--presumably because their lawyers had informed them how badly they'd lose in court.
Who said I didn't like lawyers?
51st State? (Score:5, Funny)
Re:51st State? (Score:5, Funny)
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good, stuff
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Re: 51st State? (Score:2)
It's in Alto California as opposed to Baja California. Still should have been Palo Alto, Alto California to have made sense. And of course it's been 200 years since anyone called it Alto California.
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Well, that's just too delightfully confusing not to run with!
And thanks for tricking me into learning something.
Wrong title. (Score:5, Funny)
If you want something accurate then it should be:
Corporate Entity, who will stab anyone in the back, upset about being stabbed in the back; stabs former CEO in the back
Seems like we've seen this before (Score:2)
Once innovative technology company sells a highly desirable product but then runs into growth obstacles largely defined by their success in market saturation.
Propelling financial growth requires raising prices as well as pushing an expensive and ever-growing stock of complex add-on products. Core product enhancements get pushed into these peripheral add-on products vs. the basic product. The high cost results in limited uptake, partly due to price and partly due to the diminishing utility of the add-ons.
E
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Once innovative technology company sells a highly desirable product but then runs into growth obstacles largely defined by their success in market saturation.
Worth mentioning they were also pushed aside by more innovative solutions, like virtualization. (Virtualization doesn't replace VMWare in every case, but does in a lot of cases).
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What do you think VMWare does, if not virtualisation?
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Well, actually not technically accurate.
VMware started as an application for Windows/Linux desktops, evolved to be a server product to install on those platforms, then evolved to bundle Linux, and finally rebased to an in-house kernel with a lot of Linux compatibility, but *ostensibly* not the code, though there is common code for some of the drivers. This is not to say their OS/Virtualization is markedly better for it being different, but it is different.
Nutanix started as basically 'hey, you could have vi
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Nutanix actually exports its aggregated storage as NFS, not iSCSI, or at least it did the last time I worked with it.
IMHO, iSCSI would make more sense since you could export it with fewer headaches to other cluster members.
VMware is just afraid because they can't reignite growth. Their model has been to sell a ton of bolt-on products, especially for large scale automation and management. They're expensive and of almost no value to small/mid-size users.
In addition to that, the incremental improvements in t
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The problem is the 'go parasitic' phase is highly profitable in short term, and business leaders get to loot and move on to the next company.
Much of the 'vCenter-only' features are that way for business rather than technical reasons. In many cases the vCenter server does not participate in features that vCenter is required for (short of 'hey, I'm vCenter, allow the user to use this function in ESXi'). They've been in this mode for many many years.
I frankly have been surprised that vmware has hung in the mar
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I think part of what's helped VMware has been generally high levels of reliability. I work for a MSP/VAR and Hyper-V has always been much shittier in every respect.
I've only run across one shop running a RedHat virtualization environment and I didn't come away impressed. I suspect their product is probably desirable if you're already a big RedHat shop to begin with, but I'd also guess places like that are either big into web app development or just cheap. In my case, the Redhat shop was super cheap and t
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The 'cloud' situation is interesting as I agree that vendors that now find themselves in competition with cloud have become less competitive over time, moving over to gouge their shrinking share instead of competing with what the cloud vendors are doing.
The closest they seem to come is to tout leasing instead of buying, but end up keeping prices high by focusing on high-end, low-volume, high-margin devices that are increasingly irrelevant to usage scenarios.
They make 'owning' your own stuff frustrating and
Almost pointless. (Score:2)
Sure, sue the bastards, but only to prove a point, and protect future interests if something comes up. But if they spend any significant resources or brainpower on this, they are doing the wrong thing. Do the bare minimum.
Just get back to your knitting, and donâ(TM)t take your eye off the ball. The guy knows some secrets? Fine, take that into consideration, but move forward regardless.
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When allowed to play out, it doesn't generally pan out well for the former employer (unless the employee is shown to have inappropriately shared specific data). However, the mere threat of going through this mess is enough to intimidate employees and other potential employers to avoid jumping or poaching and help keep their workforce captive to avoid having to pay a competitive rate.
You failed to compensate that person (Score:2)
So, vmware failed to compensate that person properly. Either by salary, or good project opportunities. And a better deal has come, and now they also want to stunt his growth there.
The first goal of every employee should be self-growth. You are your best investment (sounded a bit like "personal development advice", but it is true). It does not matter if you are doing minimum wage, or a high level executive. Coasting will cost you, and if a better deal comes up, just jump ship.
This is known by the companies t
vmware shooting in its own foot (Score:1)
This is a good idea of vmware! Sue your own ex-employees. It's a good means to make sure you will have trouble getting new employees (at least, those that matter).
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That's a fantastic way to open a company up to regulatory action for any little law the company might have broken.
If you attack former employees, based on the premise that your policy or contracts can trump the law, then you deserve to get smacked down, hard.
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Sadly, these stories happen regularly and occasionally make the news but by and large are ignored from the beginning or alternatively quickly forgotten. Except by HR teams that know to red flag an applicant from a company like VMware (and Amazon, HP, IBM, and probably many others that have had very public lawsuits against ex-employees and their new employers). Employees are by and large not researching whether their prospective employer will trap them and try to enforce a draconian non-compete, but even as
Hmm... time to re-evaluate Nutanix (Score:2)
If VmWare is so scared of Nutanix nowadays that they're suing, maybe it's time to re-evaluate replacing the way-too-expensive-licensing-mess that VmWare has become with Nutanix at my company.
The Nutanix Community Edition is free - let's see what it can do.
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I'm a little bit surprised (Score:2)