Local Maritz Top Candidate to Replace Ballmer as Microsoft CEO

Paul Maritz of Mercer Island is a top candidate to replace Steve Ballmer as CEO of Microsoft. He was with Microsoft from 1986 to 2000. His last position was executive vice president of the Platforms Strategy and Developer Group. He was part of the 5-person executive management team and, according to Wikipedia, was the third-ranking executive behind Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. He was responsible for most of Microsoft's desktop and server software, including Windows and Internet Explorer.

From Brier Dudley’s 9/24/13 column in The Seattle Times:

“Fortunately for Microsoft and the future health of the Puget Sound economy there are two strong contenders to replace outgoing Chief Executive Steve Ballmer — one at hand and the other nearby.

. . .

“The obvious nearby candidate is Paul Maritz, a Zimbabwe native who led Microsoft’s platforms business and developer relations when he left the company in 2000 after a 14-year run.

“Maritz went on to lead strategy at business computing giant EMC and serve as chief executive of Palo Alto, Calif.-based virtualization pioneer VMware, but all the while kept his home on Mercer Island.”

Maritz’s local mansion is on the southwest point of Mercer Island near Paul Allen’s campus/compound. A previous post with more information about Maritz and his career and accomplishments was on 2/22/12.

Steve Ballmer’s local mansion is on the east side of Hunt Point adjacent to and south of the McCaw’s, formerly Kenny G’s, compound. Previous posts about Ballmer were on 5/23/12 (Forbes article about worst CEO) and 11/17/10 (Ballmer mansion).