Cloud and virtualisation software company VMware has chosen India-born company veteran Rangarajan (Raghu) Raghuram as its next CEO from June.

The development may have triggered the exit of his India-born colleague Sanjay Poonen, who stated he was quitting after seven years at the Dell-owned company.

Raghuram and Poonen were chief operating officers at VMware and both had been in the race for the top job, which fell vacant after former CEO Pat Gelsinger joined chip maker Intel as chief executive in January.

Raghuram joins an elite club of India-born executives, including Google's Sundar Pichai, IBM’s Arvind Krishna, Microsoft's Satya Nadella and Adobe's Shantanu Narayen, who are heading global technology companies.

“I am thrilled to have Raghu step into the role of CEO at VMware. Throughout his career, he has led with integrity and conviction, playing an instrumental role in the success of VMware,” stated Michael Dell, chairman of the VMware Board of Directors. “Raghu is now in position to architect VMware’s future, assisting customers and partners accelerate their digital businesses in this multi-cloud world.”

Since joining VMware in 2003, Raghuram has aided steer the company’s strategic direction and its technology evolution.

He assisted grow the core virtualization business, drove VMware’s software-defined data centre strategy, constructed and guided VMware’s cloud computing business and SaaS transformation efforts, played a pivotal role in the company’s M&A strategy, and has been key in driving partnerships with Dell Technologies, hyper-scalers and other strategic partners, the company stated in a statement.

“VMware is uniquely poised to lead the multi-cloud computing era with an end-to-end software platform spanning clouds, the data centre and the edge, helping to accelerate our customers’ digital transformations,” Raghuram stated.

He joined VMware in August 2003 after brief stints at Bang Networks and Netscape, among the world's first companies to build a web browser.

Poonen, who is also an IIT-Bombay alumnus, has worked for big tech companies such as Microsoft, Apple, Symantec and SAP before he joined VMware and rose to become its COO.

“After a thorough and thoughtful search, the Board concluded that Raghu is the best person to lead the company as CEO, because he embodies our innovative culture, represents our values, and has a clear vision for VMware’s future,” said Paul Sagan, VMware’s lead independent director. “We also want to thank Zane Rowe for his leadership as Interim CEO and the crucial role he plays continuing as CFO."