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

Microsoft Microsoft Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company, technology conglomerate headquartered in Redmond, Washington. Founded in 1975, the company became influential in the History of personal computers#The ear ...

and

EMC Corporation EMC Corporation (stylized as EMC²) was an American multinational corporation headquartered in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, which sold data storage device, data storage, information security, virtualization, analytics, cloud computing and other pro ...

. In October 2021, Maritz was named as the chairman of the board of directors for

Acronis Acronis International GmbH, simply referred to as Acronis, is a Swiss cybersecurity and data protection technology company with its corporate headquarters in Schaffhausen, Switzerland and global headquarters in Singapore. Acronis develops on-premi ...

. He also is chairman of

Pivotal Software Pivotal Software, Inc. was an American Multinational corporation, multinational software and Service (economics), services company based in San Francisco that provided Cloud computing, cloud platform hosting and consulting services. Since Novemb ...

Early life

Paul Maritz was born and raised in

Rhodesia Rhodesia ( , ; ), officially the Republic of Rhodesia from 1970, was an unrecognised state, unrecognised state in Southern Africa that existed from 1965 to 1979. Rhodesia served as the ''de facto'' Succession of states, successor state to the ...

(now

Zimbabwe file:Zimbabwe, relief map.jpg, upright=1.22, Zimbabwe, relief map Zimbabwe, officially the Republic of Zimbabwe, is a landlocked country in Southeast Africa, between the Zambezi and Limpopo Rivers, bordered by South Africa to the south, Bots ...

). His family later moved to

South Africa South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...

where he was schooled at Highbury Preparatory School and Hilton College. He received a B.Sc. in

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

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- ...

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

University of Cape Town The University of Cape Town (UCT) (, ) is a public university, public research university in Cape Town, South Africa. Established in 1829 as the South African College, it was granted full university status in 1918, making it the oldest univer ...

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 by William Seward Burroughs I, William Seward Burroughs. The company's history paralleled many ...

and later became a researcher at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, before moving to

Silicon Valley Silicon Valley is a region in Northern California that is 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 area of the Santa Clara Valley ...

in 1981 to join

Intel Intel Corporation is an American multinational corporation and technology company headquartered in Santa Clara, California, and Delaware General Corporation Law, incorporated in Delaware. Intel designs, manufactures, and sells computer compo ...

. 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 8086 microprocessor and its 8-bit-external-bus variant, the 8088. Th ...

platform, before joining Microsoft in 1986.

Microsoft

From 1986 to 2000, he worked at

and was 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 businessman and philanthropist. A pioneer of the microcomputer revolution of the 1970s and 1980s, he co-founded the software company Microsoft in 1975 with his childhood friend ...

and

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

. 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 and the first of its Windows 9x family of operating systems, released to manufacturing on July 14, 1995, and generally to retail on August 24, 1995. Windows 95 merged ...

Windows NT Windows NT is a Proprietary software, proprietary Graphical user interface, graphical operating system produced by Microsoft as part of its Windows product line, the first version of which, Windows NT 3.1, was released on July 27, 1993. Original ...

, and

Internet Explorer Internet Explorer (formerly Microsoft Internet Explorer and Windows Internet Explorer, commonly abbreviated as IE or MSIE) is a deprecation, retired series of graphical user interface, graphical web browsers developed by Microsoft that were u ...

. 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. 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 Me (Millennium Edition) is an operating system developed by Microsoft as part of its Windows 9x family of Microsoft Windows operating systems. It was the successor to Windows 98, and was released to manufacturing on June 19, 2000, and t ...

. 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 City, with offices in the United States, Europe, Brazil, China, Southeast Asia and India. Warburg has been a private equity investor since 1966. As of April 2024 the f ...

, which developed software for

Linux Linux ( ) is a family of open source Unix-like operating systems based on the Linux kernel, an kernel (operating system), operating system kernel first released on September 17, 1991, by Linus Torvalds. Linux is typically package manager, pac ...

with development in

Bangalore Bengaluru, also known as Bangalore (List of renamed places in India#Karnataka, its official name until 1 November 2014), is the Capital city, capital and largest city of the southern States and union territories of India, Indian state of Kar ...

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

cloud computing Cloud computing is "a paradigm for enabling network access to a scalable and elastic pool of shareable physical or virtual resources with self-service provisioning and administration on-demand," according to International Organization for ...

division.

VMware

On July 8, 2008, he was appointed CEO of VMware (a public company majority-owned by EMC), replacing co-founder and CEO Diane Greene. While 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, who was the CEO of Intel from February 2021 to December 2024. Based mainly in Silicon Valley since the late 1970s, Gelsinger graduated from Stanford ...

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 is chairman of Mifos, an open source financial software platform. For some time he was the only source of financial support for the initiative.

Acronis

In October 2021, Maritz was named as the chairman of the board of directors for

. Maritz is in charge of Acronis’ governance and leadership as the company enhances its position in the service provider industry and prepares for further expansion.

Other activities

Maritz was an angel investor in Apture. 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 uses digital technology and data to understand very poor people, in detail, and offer them� ...

, 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 21st-century Zimbabwean businesspeople Academics of the University of St Andrews Afrikaner people Alumni of Hilton College (South Africa) American chairpersons of corporations American computer programmers American people of Afrikaner descent American technology chief executives American technology company founders Burroughs Corporation people EMC Corporation Microsoft employees Rhodesian emigrants to South Africa University of Cape Town alumni University of Natal alumni VMware White Rhodesian people Zimbabwean emigrants to the United States Zimbabwean people of Dutch descent