There have been rumors for a few days but now it’s final, Paul Maritz is out as the CEO of VMware.

Former Microsoft man Paul Maritz spent the last four years at VMware and and will be replaced by EMC COO Pat Gelsinger.

It not clear if Paul Maritz’s departure is volutary and it’s also uncertain what he’s going to do next.

According to CRN, Gelsinger and Maritz swap companies, putting Gelsinger in charge of VMware and Maritz taking the top spot at EMC. Another source says that Maritz is mentioned as a candidate to lead Cloud Foundry, the platform-as-a-service (PaaS) started at VMware.

Both scenarios seem plausible. At EMC CEO Joe Tucci is planning to retire. A successor has not been named but Gelsinger is not considered to be a replacement which opens the question about Maritz. Will he be named CEO of EMC? Paul Maritz has roots in the open-source movement and he is a technologist who would like the challenge of developing Cloud Foundry as its own business. His talent as a technologist led him to Intel where he developed tools for developers to build on the then new x86 platform.

Which scenario it will be? Time will tell.

Personally I regret Paul leaving VMware so soon after taking over from VMware founders Diane Green and Mendel Rosenblum. I think he did a good job representing a company like VMware which he had to lead after the initial founders. In my opinion, Paul has the same enthusiasm and drive as they did.