VMware Inc.’s top cloud executive Bill Fathers is stepping down as boss of vCloud Air after a three-year stint, Fortune reported on Wednesday.

vCloud Air has struggled to gain traction in the cloud market under Father’s leadership, due to a lack of key features and fierce competition from leading vendors like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft Azure, analysts say. In particular, the lack of pay-as-you-go pricing and the ability to sign up with a credit card led to sluggish sales, reports CRN.com. VMware recently moved to layoff the majority of vCloud Air’s staff, leading to a great deal of uncertainty over its future, while the company itself has seen numerous top executives depart in recent months.

vCloud Air was launched back in 2013 when it was known as vCloud Hybrid Service. It was widely seen as VMware’s effort to grab a piece of the enterprise cloud market, but until now it hasn’t seen the success executives had hoped for. VMware’s strategy for vCloud Air was to leverage the enormous enterprise customer base it had already amassed, with the thinking being they’d opt for VMware’s cloud if it would allow them to connect seamlessly to their VMware data center environments.

But the sheer financial muscle of the top public cloud players has thwarted VMware’s ambitions. AWS, Microsoft and Google have all pumped billions of dollars into their own public clouds and infrastructure, making it next to impossible for anyone else to compete with them. As such, VMware is one of several challengers that have been forced to rethink their public cloud strategies.

vCloud Air’s future is also uncertain in light of the upcoming merger between VMware’s parent company EMC Corp. and Dell Inc. The original plan called for vCloud Air to be merged with Virtustream, EMC’s cloud services subsidiary, but that idea was quickly derailed and no one has offered a viable alternative.

VMware told Fortune that the idea going forward is to have vCloud Air focus on more niche cloud services, like “data center extension” projects and disaster recovery.

VMware said Fathers vacant seat will be taken by two executives: vCloud Air VP and general manager Allwyn Sequeira, and VP of sales and customer success for VMware cloud services Laura Ortman, who will act as co-managers of vCloud Air.

Fathers is an ex-theCUBE alumni, having appeared on the show during VMWorld 2013: