Lucovsky moves from Cloud Foundry back to VMware in Pivotal shift

Mark Lucovsky has moved from  Cloud Foundry, the open-source Platform-as-a-Service effort that is being spun off from VMware as part of the fledgling the Pivotal Initiative and apparently back to the VMware mothership.

This is how Lucovsky’s Twitter profile appeared Friday morning:

“Done with Cloud Foundry. Hand off to Pivotal Labs complete. Now hacking a mega-cloud platform for VMware with Vadim, Skaar, Oleg, Ben, and Doug.”

lucovskytwitter According to a profile update later in the day, Lucovsky is “working on big cloud stuff at VMware.”

The timing is unclear, but last fall Lucovsky was the top gun at Cloud Foundry. A source close to Pivotal says he actually transitioned months ago, although people outside Cloud Foundry circles don’t seem to know it. VMware formally announced the Pivotal spin-off — to be headed by former VMware CEO Paul Maritz.

Lucovsky is a veteran developer. He became VP of engineering at VMware after stints as director of engineering for Google and distinguished engineer for Microsoft. His name may be familiar to non-developers because it was his exit from Microsoft to Google that caused the notorious chair-tossing incident by Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer.

Lucovsky could not be reached for comment. In other Cloud Foundry staffing news, Jerry Chen, another top figure with the effort is on sabbatical, according to his LinkedIn profile.

The Pivotal Initiative draws on tech assets from VMware and its parent company EMC.  The goal is to bring together expertise in big data, analytics, Java frameworks and agile development, the latter from Pivotal Labs, a company acquired by EMC last year.  Since the spinoff still evolving it’s natural that there be some ebb-and-flow of personnel. Along with Maritz, former Pivotal Labs CEO Rob Mee is helping to  manage effort.


GigaOM