Earlier this month, when Nutanix announced it was hiring former VMware COO Rajiv Ramaswami as CEO, it seemed like a good match. Furthermore, it has extracted a key player from a market rival. Well, it looks like VMware he made an exception for the loss of the executive and yesterday filed a lawsuit against him for breach of contract.
The company claims Ramaswami was thoroughly familiar with his former company's key plans and should have told them he was interviewing for a job at a rival organization.
"Rajiv Ramaswami has failed to honor its fiduciary and contractual obligations to VMware. For at least two months before stepping down from the company, at the same time he was working with senior leadership to shape VMware's strategic vision and key direction, Mr. Ramaswami also secretly met at least the CEO, CFO, and apparently the entire board. of administration of Nutanix administrators, Inc. will become the CEO of Nutanix. He joined Nutanix as CEO just two days after leaving VMware, "the company wrote in a statement.
As you can imagine, Nutanix disagreed, retorting in a statement that "VMware's lawsuit tries to make interviewing for a new job illegal. We see VMware's wrongdoing as a response to the loss of a highly valued and respected member of its leadership team. Mr. Ramaswami and Nutanix went to great lengths to be proactive and cooperative with VMware during the transition. "
At the time of hiring, Constellation Research analyst Holger Mueller noted that the two companies were top competitors, and hiring Ramawami was a big win for Nutanix. "So hiring Ramaswami both brings a multi-cloud expert at the helm of Nutanix and undermines a key competitor from a talent standpoint," he told me earlier this month.
It's unclear what the end game would be in this type of lawsuit, but it complicates matters for Nutanix as it moves on to a new CEO. Ramaswami took over from co-founder Dheeraj Pandey, who announced plans to step down last summer.
The lawsuit was filed Monday in the California State Superior Court in Santa Clara County.
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