Chuck Hollis, an alumnus of theCube who earned a reputation as an expert on all things storage during his 18 year stint with EMC, quit his post as global marketing CTO to join VMware. Hollis will serve as the chief strategist for the virtualization giant’s storage application services business group, a new division that focuses on software-defined storage, big data, cloud apps and other bleeding edge technology trends.

The veteran executive wrote in a blog post that he is joining VMware (which is majority-owned by EMC) because he believes that the company will play a central role in the tech industry’s “inevitable” transition to software-defined storage. As he put it: “Storage — whether software-defined or not — doesn’t live on an island: it touches and integrates with other forms of infrastructure, consumption models, use cases, applications, etc. Just about all of that can be found in the VMware portfolio and strategy, and more.”

Hollis noted that his new title is intentionally vague because he wants “the flexibility to move around from topic to topic as needed.” He did not elaborate on the projects he’ll be working on, but he did highlight that his insights into the storage industry and IT ecosystem at large will prove to be of great value to VMware.

In an interview with theCube host Dave Vellante at EMC World 2012, Hollis discussed the transformation of the IT industry as the cloud and big data have become major players.

“IT transformation is all about IT learning how to compete. More and more IT organizations have realized they don’t have a monopoly on delivering IT services; they reorg around new skills, new capabilities, [and] the first thing they want is a variable platform to deliver services –  that’s cloud to you and me. […] The question comes up, ‘Okay now that I’ve  done this, what is the killer use case that I’m going to point this on that creates value as opposed to reducing costs?’ […] Big Data analytics for a lot of people is a new source of wealth and a new source of value.”

To see the full interview, click on the video below.

The appointment of Hollis as chief strategist is a big win for the firm, which has experienced something of an executive exodus in recent months. Rick Jackson, the company’s former chief marketing officer, resigned in March after CTO and SVP of research Stephen Herrod left for a lucrative position with a high profile VC. VMware needs all the leadership talent it can get (and hold onto) to successfully diversify in the face of increased competition from both competing hypervisor vendors and cloud providers such as Amazon.