Vittorio Viarengo, vice president of product marketing for VMware's End User Computing division and a vocal proponent of the post-PC era, left the Palo Alto, Calif.-based vendor this week after a three and half year stint.

Viarengo confirmed his exit from VMware on his Twitter feed and said he plans to share details on his next job in a blog post next week. Sources told CRN Friday Viarengo may be heading to a startup, though this could not be confirmed.

A VMware spokesperson declined to comment on Viarengo's departure but said the vendor does plan to replace him. His departure will not impact the strategy of VMware's End User Computing division, which is led by Boaz Chalamish, senior vice president and general manager, the spokesperson told CRN.

[Related: VMware Unveils Bundle For Managing Mobile Desktops, Devices]

Since joining VMware in 2009, Viarengo has played a key role in articulating the notion that virtualization is a stepping-stone to cloud computing. At VMworld in August, he talked about how Horizon Suite, slated for beta release before the end of the year, helps organizations deal with the bring-your-own-device trend.

"It is a thing of beauty; all integrated in one place for the end user and the administrator," Viarengo said of Horizon Suite in a video shot at VMworld in August.

Viarengo is the second high-profile End User Computing executive to leave VMware this year. Noah Wasmer, senior director and project management lead for Horizon, departed in February and is now vice president of product management at MobileIron, a mobile device management startup in Mountain View, Calif.

At VMworld, VMware CTO Steve Herrod described Horizon Suite as a "multidevice workspace" that can replace the "hodgepodge of tools" IT departments currently employ to deal with BYOD.

Horizon Suite includes Horizon Data, VMware's enterprise-focused answer to Dropbox, which was previously called Project Octopus; AppBlast, which lets users access Windows and Mac apps on any device with an HTML5 browser; Horizon Mobile, which separates the work and personal apps and data on mobile devices; and Horizon Application Manager, an enterprise app store for users and IT departments.

PUBLISHED OCT. 26, 2012