Paul Maritz

Paul Maritz was born and raised in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). His family later moved to South Africa where he was schooled at Highbury Preparatory School and Hilton College. He received a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Natal, and a B.Sc. (Hons) degree, also in Computer Science, from the University of Cape Town in 1977.

After finishing his graduate studies, Maritz had a programming job with Burroughs Corporation and later became a researcher at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, before moving to Silicon Valley in 1981 to join Intel. He worked for Intel for five years, including developing early tools to help developers write software for the then-new x86 platform, before joining Microsoft in 1986. From 1986 to 2000 he worked at Microsoft, becoming 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 and Steve Ballmer. He was responsible for essentially all of Microsoft's desktop and server software, including such major initiatives as the development of Windows 95, Windows NT, and Internet Explorer. He was the highest-ranking executive to testify at the antitrust trial of Microsoft in 1999. In July 1999 he announced he would have a reduced role at Microsoft, and resigned in September 2000 around the announcement of Windows ME.

He then co-founded, and was CEO of Pi Corporation, a company backed by Warburg Pincus, which developed software for Linux with development in Bangalore, India. When Pi was acquired by EMC in February 2008, Maritz briefly became president and general manager of EMC Corporation's cloud computing division. On July 8, 2008 he was appointed CEO of VMware (a public company majority-owned by EMC), replacing co-founder and CEO Diane Greene.

In April 2013 he was announced as the CEO of Pivotal, a venture funded by General Electric (GE), EMC and VMware.

He was an angel investor in Apture. He sponsors third-world development projects and is the chairman of the board of the Grameen Foundation.