New CEO Paul Maritz, formerly of Microsoft, may have just taken the helm of a sinking ship in VMware. CEO Diane Greene was unceremoniously ousted by chairman and CEO of corporate parent EMC Joe Tucci last month, leaving no women navigating any top Valley companies. Her husband, cofounder and fellow sailor Mendel Rosenblum to whom Tucci offered the CEO job and a board seat, has now officially resigned; product development VP Paul Chan soft-quit and will be gone by October; and VP of R&D Richard Sarwal moved to competitor Oracle last week (where, thanks to a recent California court decision, he does not have to honor any non-compete agreements).

Rosenblum has been on vacation for a month after Greene's firing, possibly to lessen the bad publicity ahead of VMworld 2008 in Las Vegas which starts next Monday — while Microsoft has been busy introducing its own virtualization technologies in a barnstorming campaign this week. My advice to Greene and Rosenblum? Sell those pre-IPO options as soon as you can, because the stock is bound to dip below the initial price sooner rather than later.

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