Nutanix revealed today the appointment of Rajiv Ramaswami, a former executive from VMware, as its new president and CEO. Ramaswami will succeed co-founder Dheeraj Pandey, who previously announced his retirement plans in August.

The incoming CEO possesses three decades of experience within the technology sector, having held roles at companies such as Broadcom, Cisco, Nortel, and IBM, alongside his most recent position as chief operating officer of Products and Cloud Services at VMware.

During his time at VMware, Ramaswami directly observed Nutanix as a significant competitor, and now he is set to guide the company through its subsequent stage of development. “I have consistently held Nutanix in high regard as a strong competitor, an innovator in hyperconverged infrastructure, and a prominent provider of cloud software,” Ramaswami stated. He intends to leverage his extensive industry expertise to further expand the company’s reach.

Sohaib Abbasi, Nutanix’s lead independent director, emphasized that Ramaswami’s qualifications were particularly impressive during the candidate search. “Rajiv differentiated himself from other CEO candidates through his exceptional blend of strong operational skills, business insight, technological foresight, and collaborative leadership qualities,” Abbasi noted in a statement.

Holger Mueller, an analyst with Constellation Research, believes this appointment is strategically sound, given VMware’s increasing prominence as Nutanix’s main rival. “Nutanix and VMware are both striving to become the leading neutral platform for virtualization and workload portability, functioning across both cloud and on-premise computing environments,” he explained.

Furthermore, this move enables Nutanix to acquire a highly skilled executive. “Bringing Ramaswami on board not only secures a multi-cloud expert for Nutanix’s leadership but also diminishes a key competitor’s talent pool,” he added.

Established in 2009, Nutanix has secured over $600 million in funding from investors including Khosla Ventures, Lightspeed Ventures, Sapphire Ventures, Fidelity, and Wellington Management, as per data from Crunchbase. The company launched its initial public offering in 2016. The market has responded favorably to the news, with the company’s stock price increasing by 1.29% at the time of this report.