VMware Names Company Veteran as CTO

VMware has filled a major leadership role by promoting Kit Colbert to serve as its next Chief Technology Officer.

The company’s previous CTO, Greg Lavender, jumped ship in June 2021 to rejoin Pat Gelsinger at Intel and serve as the company’s CTO. Gelsinger left VMware’s top executive role to become Intel’s CEO in February.

Colbert, who has been with the enterprise software giant since 2003, will now lead the company’s Engineering Services team, the Design/UX team, and the company’s ESG commitments. Additionally, he will oversee VMware’s technical vision as it continues its transition to become a cloud and subscription-centric R&D organization.

“It is with great pleasure that we welcome Kit into the position of CTO at VMware. Kit’s passion, proven technological savvy and excellent leadership capabilities will be instrumental in advancing our innovation engine and research and development efforts,” VMware CEO Raghu Raghuram said in the company's announcment.

Colbert is a natural pick as the software giant’s next top technologist as he has led tech teams throughout the company after he started as the technical lead for the vMotion and Storage vMotion features in VMware vSphere. He eventually worked his way up to serve as the CTO of VMware’s Cloud, General Manager of VMware’s Cloud-Native Apps business, CTO for VMware’s End-User Computing Business, and as the lead architect for the VMware vRealize Operations Suite.