Paul Alistair Maritz (born March 16, 1955) is a computer scientist and software executive. He held positions at large companies including

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational technology corporation producing computer software, consumer electronics, personal computers, and related services headquartered at the Microsoft Redmond campus located in Redmond, Washing ...

and

EMC Corporation Dell EMC (EMC Corporation until 2016) is an American multinational corporation headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts and Round Rock, Texas, United States. Dell EMC sells data storage, information security, virtualization, analytics, cloud ...

. He currently serves as chairman of

Pivotal Software Pivotal Software, Inc. was an American multinational software and services company based in San Francisco that provided cloud platform hosting and consulting services. Since December 2019, Pivotal has been part of VMware. History Pivotal S ...

Early life

Paul Maritz was born and raised in

Rhodesia Rhodesia (, ), officially from 1970 the Republic of Rhodesia, was an unrecognised state in Southern Africa from 1965 to 1979, equivalent in territory to modern Zimbabwe. Rhodesia was the ''de facto'' successor state to the British colony of S ...

(now

Zimbabwe Zimbabwe (), officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country located in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Botswana to the south-west, Zambia to the north, and Mozam ...

). His family later moved to

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the southernmost country in Africa. It is bounded to the south by of coastline that stretch along the South Atlantic and Indian Oceans; to the north by the neighbouring countri ...

where he was schooled at

Highbury Preparatory School Highbury Preparatory School is a South African private school for boys located in Hillcrest (eThekwini Metropolitan Municipality), KwaZulu-Natal. History Highbury was founded in 1903 by Sibella Douglas McMillan. It was named after Highbury House ...

and Hilton College. He received a B.Sc. in

Computer Science Computer science is the study of computation, automation, and information. Computer science spans theoretical disciplines (such as algorithms, theory of computation, information theory, and automation) to Applied science, practical discipli ...

from the

University of Natal The University of Natal was a university in the former South African province Natal which later became KwaZulu-Natal. The University of Natal no longer exists as a distinct legal entity, as it was incorporated into the University of KwaZulu-N ...

, and a B.Sc. (Hons) degree, also in Computer Science, from the

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) ( af, Universiteit van Kaapstad, xh, Yunibesithi ya yaseKapa) is a public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university statu ...

in 1977.

Career

After finishing his graduate studies, Maritz had a programming job with

Burroughs Corporation The Burroughs Corporation was a major American manufacturer of business equipment. The company was founded in 1886 as the American Arithmometer Company. In 1986, it merged with Sperry UNIVAC to form Unisys. The company's history paralleled many ...

and later became a researcher at the

University of St. Andrews (Aien aristeuein) , motto_lang = grc , mottoeng = Ever to ExcelorEver to be the Best , established = , type = Public research university Ancient university , endowment ...

in Scotland, before moving to

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that serves as a global center for high technology and innovation. Located in the southern part of the San Francisco Bay Area, it corresponds roughly to the geographical areas San Mateo County ...

in 1981 to join

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California. It is the world's largest semiconductor chip manufacturer by revenue, and is one of the developers of the x86 seri ...

. He worked for Intel for five years, including developing early tools to help developers write software for the then-new

x86 x86 (also known as 80x86 or the 8086 family) is a family of complex instruction set computer (CISC) instruction set architectures initially developed by Intel based on the Intel 8086 microprocessor and its 8088 variant. The 8086 was introd ...

platform, before joining Microsoft in 1986.

Microsoft

From 1986 to 2000, he worked at

and served on its executive committee. He became executive vice president of the Platforms Strategy and Developer Group and part of the 5-person executive management team. He was often said to be the third-ranking executive, behind

Bill Gates William Henry Gates III (born October 28, 1955) is an American business magnate and philanthropist. He is a co-founder of Microsoft, along with his late childhood friend Paul Allen. During his career at Microsoft, Gates held the positions ...

and

Steve Ballmer Steven Anthony Ballmer (; March 24, 1956) is an American business magnate and investor who served as the chief executive officer of Microsoft from 2000 to 2014. He is the current owner of the Los Angeles Clippers of the National Basketball Associ ...

. He was responsible for essentially all of Microsoft's desktop and server software, including such major initiatives as the development of

Windows 95 Windows 95 is a consumer-oriented operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of operating systems. The first operating system in the 9x family, it is the successor to Windows 3.1x, and was released to manufacturin ...

Windows NT Windows NT is a proprietary graphical operating system An operating system (OS) is system software that manages computer hardware, software resources, and provides common services for computer programs. Time-sharing operating systems sc ...

, and

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated IE or MSIE) is a series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft which was used in the Microsoft Wind ...

. He was the highest-ranking executive to testify at the antitrust trial of Microsoft in 1999. While at Microsoft, Maritz was credited with originating the term "eating your own dogfood" also known as

dogfooding Eating your own dog food or "dogfooding" is the practice of using one's own products or services. This can be a way for an organization to test its products in real-world usage using product management techniques. Hence dogfooding can act as qual ...

. In July 1999, he announced he would have a reduced role at Microsoft, and resigned in September 2000 around the announcement of

Windows ME Windows Millennium Edition, or Windows Me (marketed with the pronunciation of the pronoun "me"), is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It is the successor to Windo ...

. According to

Maritz was "truly a leader among leaders". Bill Gates stated that "Paul's vision and technological insight has had a major impact not only on Microsoft but on the entire computer industry." In October 2013, he was reported to again be under consideration to become chief executive of

, succeeding Ballmer.

Pi Corporation

He then co-founded, and was CEO of Pi Corporation, a company backed by

Warburg Pincus Warburg Pincus LLC is a global private equity firm, headquartered in New York, with offices in the United States, Europe, Brazil, China, Southeast Asia and India. Warburg has been a private equity investor since 1966. The firm currently has over ...

, which developed software for

Linux Linux ( or ) is a family of open-source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically packaged as a Linux distribution, which ...

with development in

Bangalore Bangalore (), officially Bengaluru (), is the capital and largest city of the Indian state of Karnataka. It has a population of more than and a metropolitan population of around , making it the third most populous city and fifth most ...

, India. When Pi was acquired by EMC in February 2008, Maritz briefly became president and general manager of

cloud computing Cloud computing is the on-demand availability of computer system resources, especially data storage ( cloud storage) and computing power, without direct active management by the user. Large clouds often have functions distributed over mul ...

division.

VMware

On July 8, 2008 he was appointed CEO of

VMware VMware, Inc. is an American cloud computing and virtualization technology company with headquarters in Palo Alto, California. VMware was the first commercially successful company to virtualize the x86 architecture. VMware's desktop software ru ...

(a public company majority-owned by EMC), replacing co-founder and CEO

Diane Greene Diane B. Greene (born June 9, 1955) is an American technology entrepreneur and executive. Greene started her career as a naval architect before transitioning to the tech industry, where she was a founder and CEO of VMware from 1998 until 2008. ...

. While serving as CEO, company sales and profits tripled by mid-2012. He was succeeded as CEO by

Pat Gelsinger Patrick Paul Gelsinger (; born March 5, 1961) is an American business executive and engineer currently serving as CEO of Intel. Based mainly in Silicon Valley since the late 1970s, Gelsinger graduated from Stanford University with a master's deg ...

on September 1, 2012.

GoPivotal

In April 2013, he was announced as the CEO of GoPivotal, Inc. (Pivotal), a venture funded by General Electric (GE), EMC and VMware which he led until August 2015. After his resignation he announced that he would stay the CEO of Pivotal and mentor other companies in which he has invested. He also wants to work for Mifos, a financial services startup, that targets developing countries.

Mifos

Maritz serves as Chairman of the Board of Mifos, an open source financial software platform. For some time he was the only source of financial support for the initiative.

Philanthropy

Maritz was an angel investor in

Apture Apture was a service that allowed publishers and bloggers to link and incorporate multimedia into a dynamic layer above their pages. Apture was used by several large organizations and publishers including ''The Washington Post'', ''The Economist'' ...

. He is the chairman of the board of the

Grameen Foundation Grameen Foundation, founded as Grameen Foundation USA, also known as "GFUSA", is a global 501(c)(3) non-profit organization based in Washington, DC, that works to replicate the Grameen Bank microfinance model around the world through a global netw ...

, which provides microfinance support and sponsors third-world development projects. Maritz is interested in wildlife issues and helps developing countries to use technology to improve life.

Recognition

In 2010, Paul Maritz was named by '' CRN'' the number one Most Influential Executive of 2010. In 2011, Maritz won the Morgan Stanley Leadership Award for Global Commerce. As well in 2011, the ''Silicon Valley Business Journal'' announced Paul Maritz as the Executive of the Year.

References

External links

* * * {{DEFAULTSORT:Maritz, Paul 1955 births Living people Afrikaner people White Rhodesian people Zimbabwean people of Dutch descent American people of Afrikaner descent Zimbabwean emigrants to the United States Microsoft employees University of Cape Town alumni Alumni of Hilton College (South Africa) Academics of the University of St Andrews American technology chief executives American company founders Computer programmers American chairpersons of corporations University of Natal alumni Burroughs Corporation people Rhodesian emigrants to South Africa