“Roese will play a key role in shaping EMC’s technology strategy as the company embarks on its next phase of growth and leadership across three of the most transformative trends in the history of IT – Cloud, Big Data and Trusted IT”

Roese states:

“The entire IT industry is in a period of rapid evolution towards radically more agile, scalable and user-centric computing. EMC is ideally positioned in the center of this transformation with core strengths across Cloud, Big Data, and Trusted IT. I am excited and energized to join this great company at the beginning of this next exciting chapter for the global technology industry.”

Executive Vice President Jeremy Burton said:

“John brings to EMC ® a unique blend of experience spanning the entire breadth of IT systems from silicon all the way up through networking, storage, servers and virtualization. In addition, he’s directed product development in enterprise, carrier and consumer markets. At heart, John is a true technologist, but he is also a proven strategist and general manager with extraordinary vision and operational expertise within very large, complex organizations. I am thrilled to welcome John to EMC.”

Jeff Nick in the meantime will be focused on big data and new application initiatives in his new role. Maritz is the former CEO of VMware, a position now held by Pat Gelsinger, and is now Chief Strategist for EMC. The changes continue across the EMC empire in an outward shift on the path to software-defined datacenter initiatives. While Nick and Maritz no doubt will be immersed in the Big Data mission; there had been some prior speculation on Cloud Foundry spinning out on its own. In a recent article, John Furrier reports:

“According to reports from GigaOm, VMware was considering spinning out the Cloud Foundry business as a separate company combined with EMC’s Greenplum and Project Rubicon efforts. Paul Maritz is being talked about at the possible CEO of Cloud Foundry which was launched as an open source platform-as-a-service that was developed at VMware.

I doubt that will happen. According to my sources, Maritz will not be taking that role if it Cloud Foundry does spin out.”

Regardless “emerging application initiatives” as quoted in the press release could mean anything.  Could it lead to the rumored – and denied Cloud Foundry spin-off?  Whether one’s opinion is that Maritz and Nick are out to pasture, or involved in another nascent technology, without a doubt EMC has made their biggest moves already, and appear to be stacking the deck for something significant.