Paul Maritz is no longer the CEO of virtualization giant VMware, and it has industry watchers asking lots of questions. Did Maritz step down voluntarily? Did EMC, which owns an 80 percent stake in VMware, drive the change? EMC officially confirmed the management changes, but didn’t explain the rationale behind the moves.

Maritz is leaving the CEO role, but isn’t going far. Maritz will become chief strategist at EMC; he will also remain on the VMWare board of directors. Pat Gelsinger, EMC President and COO of Information Infrastructure Products, and frequent guest of the Cube, will be the new CEO of VMware, as of September 1^st. He will also join the VMware Board of Directors.

John Furrier exercised his secret super power of foreshadowing the future and asked Gelsinger at this year’s EMC World what he would do if he were the CEO of VMware.

EMC World 2012 was not the first time Gelsinger has taken time to speak to the Cube. Shortly after joining EMC in 2010, he sat down for what turned out to be a very candid conversation with John Furrier and Dave Vellante.

By the next year at EMC World 2011, the Cube and Gelsinger were old friends. Vellante and Furrier engaged Gelsinger a record fifth discussion with the Cube. They discussed EMC’s jump into the big data market with GreenPlum and Hadoop, and EMC’s plans to broaden it horizons into the software world.

Gelsinger joined the Cube again to explore the growing popularity of flash-based solutions and EMC’s entry into the PCIe flash card market with VFache. Gelsinger made the bold prediction that eventually all performant data would move to flash.

Although Maritz’s reign as CEO of VMware was mostly successful, the financial markets showed their approval of Gelsinger with cash. The share price of both EMC and VMware rose on the confirmation that Gelsinger would be taking the helm. Time will tell how Gelsinger will perform, but one thing is already clear – he won’t be timid about expressing his opinions.