The Middle East is not the only place in the world where presidential changes are news these days. But even if you're a virtualization geek like me, you might have been surprised to hear about a change that hits a little closer to home -- a presidential shake-up taking place within the hallowed halls of VMware, the industry's virtualization leader.

As of Friday, VMware had still not issued a press release about the news, but the company did quietly disclose a reorganization of the company's leadership in a Jan. 27 filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

According to the document, Paul Maritz, the ex-Microsoft hotshot brought in to the company by EMC to replace VMware co-founder Diane Greene as president and CEO back in 2008, has himself been removed as president of VMware but will retain his leadership position and the title of CEO.

When EMC CEO and VMware chairman Joe Tucci replaced Greene with Maritz, the move was attributed to Greene's lacking the operational experience needed to lead the company into its next growth stage. Maritz came in and did his job, propelling the company from a desktop and server virtualization company into a more sophisticated virtualization and cloud infrastructure company.

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