Virtual Iron's New CEO Outlines Plans

Virtualization startup Virtual Iron has shuffled its management pack in an attempt to take on VMware, appointing former EMC exec Ed Walsh as its new CEO.

The one-time general manager of EMC's data protection group takes the Virtual Iron reins from outgoing CEO John Thibault, who remains chairman of the board.

The new CEO told Byte and Switch that he was recruited by Thibault, who is keen to re-focus his energies on the product side of Virtual Iron's business. "He's chairman, he's still involved," he says. "My whole background is about driving growth and go-to-market."

Up until a year ago, Walsh was CEO of data-duplication specialist Avamar, which was bought by EMC for $165 million in November 2006.

The exec left EMC in February, subsequently consulting for "some VCs" and spending time with his family. "I learnt to surf with my two girls," he says. "I took six months off, but my wife [eventually] gave me an application form for Starbucks."Now back in the storage fold, Walsh says that a sizeable chunk of his time at Virtual Iron will be spent forging deals with other software vendors. "We're going to partner with the ecosystem," he says, highlighting in particular systems management specialists such as IBM, CA, HP, and Symantec.

"How do you leverage things like Tivoli, OpenView, and Symantec for backup? That's where I would like to go and have these conversations."

The biggest challenge for Virtual Iron is dealing with established virtualization vendors like VMware and XenSource, which was recently snapped up by Citrix for $500 million.

Virtual Iron has typically challenged VMware by wielding price as a cudgel, significantly undercutting its rival's flagship ESX Server.

Virtual Iron's strategy has not exactly taken the wind out of VMware's sails, which seems unstoppable with a $1.7 billion IPO now under its belt and strong revenues during its first quarter as a public company."I don't think that we have to go after VMware, there's so much white space as this [market] grows," says Walsh, explaining that the startup is planning to partner with storage vendors.

"We don't force you to put in a proprietary file system. We need to get that message out."

Money, at least, will not be a problem, according to Walsh. "There's plenty of money in the bank for what we're trying to do -- we have deep pockets," he says, adding that Virtual Iron has racked up around $46 million over four rounds.

The exec was less forthcoming on the issue of Virtual Iron's customer list, confirming only that it amounts to less than 1,000 organizations, but somewhere in "the high hundreds."

The incoming CEO has already brought in his own sales chief, former EMC senior vice president for American sales, John McCarthy. "There was a vacancy," Walsh says, adding that McCarthy took over from Virtual Iron's former sales chief, Jeff Melvin, who left the company to pursue "another opportunity" about three months ago."Have a comment on this story? Please click "Discuss" below. If you'd like to contact Byte and Switch's editors directly, send us a message.