VMware Names First VMware Fellows to Recognize Exceptional Leadership and Technology Contributions
VMware to Grant $1.6 Million in Endowments to Computer Science Education
PALO ALTO, Calif., June 7, 2012 – VMware, Inc. (NYSE: VMW), the global leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure, today announced the appointment of two VMware Fellows, recognizing the continued and dramatic contributions by outstanding VMware people to its products, the company and the industry at large. As the inaugural VMware Fellows, Ole Agesen and Mike Nelson are being honored by endowments in their names of $800,000 each to Stanford University and UC Berkeley, their respective alma maters.
“Ole and Mike are two incredible engineers who have each spent more than 12 years at VMware and embody the broader VMware research and development philosophy,” said Steve Herrod, chief technology officer and senior vice president of R&D, VMware. “Their passion for continued innovation and relentless focus on product performance and quality have helped make VMware vSphere® what it is today. Ole and Mike represent the types of engineers VMware continues to seek out and hire for our global workforce.”
Agesen and Nelson, previously both VMware principal engineers, have collectively earned 50 granted or pending patents for VMware and made major contributions to VMware vSphere® and the company’s industry-leading cloud offerings.
Agesen earned an M.S. in computer science from Aarhus University in Denmark and a Ph.D. in computer science from Stanford University. He has been with the VMware Monitor Group since 1999, contributing to all releases of VMware ESX® and VMware vSphere since version 1. Prior to VMware, Agesen served as the technical lead for Sun Microsystems’ first server-class Java Virtual Machine, ExactVM. Throughout his 12 years with VMware, Agesen has led several industry firsts for the company, including the first enterprise-class x86 virtual machine monitor (VMM), support for virtual SMP, support for 64-bit and support for hardware-provided virtualization extensions.
Nelson, inventor of numerous technologies across the VMware product line, earned his Ph.D. in computer science from UC Berkeley, where he was a key member of the team that developed the Sprite Distributed Operating System. He began his career developing system software at Sun Microsystems and has spent the last 13 years at VMware leading the development of numerous groundbreaking virtualization and cloud computing products. He was the lead architect of VMkernel, an operating system designed to run virtual machines that is the foundation for all VMware server products. Nelson also led development of VMware vMotion®, the first product to enable a running virtual machine to be migrated between hosts. More recently, he led two efforts to improve virtual machine availability: the development of software-based fault tolerance for virtual machines, and the re-architecting of VMware vSphere High Availability to improve scalability, reliability and performance.
The $1.6 million in endowments will support computer science programs at each university, and they are part of a broader VMware initiative to engage with the next generation of talented engineers and the schools they attend.
About VMware
VMware is the leader in virtualization and cloud infrastructure solutions that enable businesses to thrive in the Cloud Era. Customers rely on VMware to help them transform the way they build, deliver and consume Information Technology resources in a manner that is evolutionary and based on their specific needs. With 2011 revenues of $3.77 billion, VMware has more than 350,000 customers and 50,000 partners. The company is headquartered in Silicon Valley with offices throughout the world and can be found online at www.vmware.com.
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