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CONFIRMED: EMC’s Paul Maritz Is Leading A New Spinoff (EMC, VMW)

Paul Maritz and Pat Gelsinger, VMware CEOs

VMworld 2012 live stream

Paul Maritz and Pat Gelsinger

EMCconfirmed today

what most Valley insiders had been whispering about for months: Former VMware CEO Paul Maritz will be running a massive new spinoff business.

It wants him to repeat the big success he had with VMware at the new effort called The Pivotal Initiative.

We first reported on those rumors in September, noting in our coverage of the succession contest at the giant storage maker that "EMC might have Maritz working on another spinoff company."

EMC's acquisition and partial spinoff of VMware has been very successful for both companies.

The new business will focus on big data and cloud and will itself be big, right out of the gate. EMC and VMware are dedicating about 1,400 employees to the new unit.

Some 800 employees will come from EMC, specifically from its Greenplum and Pivotal Labs acquisitions.

Soe 600 employees will come from VMware, including VMware’s vFabric unit (that includes employees gained from the Springsource and GemFire acquisitions). The vFabric unit offers software that run Java applications. VMware is also assigning its very important Cloud Foundry unit to the new spin off. Cloud Foundry is VMware's open source cloud platform.

Pivotal is also getting Cetas, the Hadoop analytics startup VMware recently acquired.

This new unit lets EMC and VMware accomplish a lot of things. For one, it gives VMware's "platform as a service" cloud a better shot at competing against the likes of offerings from Amazon, Microsoft, and Google. VMware's cloud was sort of an odd fit, since VMware also sells software that lets others build clouds.

With the cloud offering on its own, VMware is free to concentrate on its new thing: taking down Cisco with software-defined networks via its $1.26 billion acquisition of Nicira.

Another big question is where this leaves EMC in its succession plans. EMC said a few months ago that longtime CEO Joe Tucci will stick around until 2015. The hunt for a successor is on. Maritz, who is currently EMC's chief strategy officer, is considered a top candidate. So is the guy who is now VMware's CEO, Pat Gelsinger.

The Pivotal Initiative will be formally open for business around Q2 2013, EMC says. That doesn't give Maritz much time to make it a success before EMC's corner office is vacated.

Don't miss: 9 Tech Trends That Will Make Someone Billions Of Dollars Next Year

Netflix Stock Soars After It Announces A Big Deal With Disney (NFLX, DIS)

Netflix stock is up almost 10% after it announced a new deal with Disney.

Here is the full release:

Netflix Inc. (NFLX) and The Walt Disney Company (DIS) today announced a new multi-year licensing agreement that will make Netflix the exclusive U.S. subscription television service for first-run live-action and animated feature films from The Walt Disney Studios.

Beginning with its 2016 theatrically released feature films, new Disney, Walt Disney Animation Studios, Pixar Animation Studios, Marvel Studios and Disneynature titles will be made available for Netflix members to watch instantly in the pay TV window on multiple platforms, including television, tablets, computers and mobile phones. Also included in the agreement are high-profile Disney direct-to-video new releases, which will be made available on Netflix starting in 2013.

Separately, Disney and Netflix have reached agreement on a multi-year catalog deal that today brings to U.S. Netflix members such beloved Disney movies such as "Dumbo," "Pocahontas" and "Alice in Wonderland."

"Disney and Netflix have shared a long and mutually beneficial relationship and this deal will bring to our subscribers, in the first pay TV window, some of the highest-quality, most imaginative family films being made today," said Ted Sarandos, Chief Content Officer at Netflix. "It's a bold leap forward for Internet television and we are incredibly pleased and proud this iconic family brand is teaming with Netflix to make it happen."

"With this cutting-edge agreement, we are thrilled to take our highly valued relationship with Netflix to the next level by adding Disney's premier films to their programming line-up," said Janice Marinelli, President, Disney-ABC Domestic Television. "Netflix continues to meet the demands of its subscribers in today's rapidly evolving digital landscape, and we are delighted that they will have much earlier access to our top-quality and entertaining slate," she continued.

Financial terms of the agreement were not disclosed.

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Fashion Roundup: Victoria’s Secret Slapped with $15M Lawsuit, Kate Middleton’s Fashion App and More!

Kate Middleton presents a royal fashion app? Not exactly. Still, a new mobile phone app has been launched tracking the Duchess of Cambridge’s every single style move. The app has already been downloaded by thousands of royal fashion lovers, revealing all the names of the designers or stores where each particular piece can be purchased. (Vogue UK)

Moving on to another Kate… Katy, that is. Katy Perry goes pumpkin on the cover of L’Officiel September issue with orange hair. Perry’s hair will soon complete the full spectrum of colors in a rainbow, after being featured in bubblegum pink, platinum blonde and just about every other color you can think of. This is her first time as orange. (Styleite)

Victoria’s Secret is being sued for $15 million by Zephyrs for misleading consumers and producing cheaper products. Allegedly VS are still packaging their products with visuals by Zephyrs-produced hosiery, which are no longer providing their top quality Italian hosiery to the lingerie giants. (Fashionista)

President Barack Obama will appear on the cover of Glamour’s November issue. This is part of Obama’s campaigning efforts to target new audiences in alternative news outlets. He will also appear on ESPN Magazine, People Magazine and more. (WWD)

‘Jersey Shore’ star and fashion designer Nicole Polizzi, aka Snooki, gave birth to her first baby boy named Lorenzo Dominic LaValle. The boy’s father is Snooki’s fianc Jionni LaValle, whose relationship with Snooki was also seen on MTV’s hit reality series. (MTV)

Closing our list of fashion highlights for this week, James Franco collaborated with 7 For All Mankind for a limited-edition T-shirt collection. His collection embodies the “cool California spirit”, with the graphics on the shirts gleaned from over 3,000 Polaroid shots taken during the campaign’s video shoots which were also made by Franco.

Take a look at the latest behind the scenes video released by Franco:

Fashion Roundup: New York Fashion Week History Lesson and Kristen Stewart Opens Up For British Vogue

New York Fashion Week opens today! Which, of course, is a great opportunity to review the history of this prestigious event. NY Fashion Week was the very first Fashion Week ever, before Paris or Milan, way back in 1943. And it was called ‘Press Week’. Next year will be the 20th Anniversary for New York Fashion Week. It’s exciting to be part of fashion history, isn’t it? (Fashionetc)

Kristen Stewart fronts the cover of British Vogue’s October issue. The desirable actress has fallen prey to a media storm over the past month, due to the events surrounding her breakup from Twilight co-star and longtime boyfriend, Robert Pattinson. Stewart opens up about her relationships, fame and what she thinks of her public image. (Vogue UK)

Stella McCartney leads the British Fashion Awards 2012 with three nominations. McCartney is nominated for Best Designer, Best Fashion Brand and Best Red Carpet Award. In the Models category, FashionTV’s Model of the Week models Cara Delevingne and Jourdan Dunn, will go head to head for the prize. (Telegraph)

American fashion stylist and designer, Rachel Zoe, seems to be taking a step back with her clothing line. The Bravo TV star has been rumored to take her name off the list of London Fashion Week, since her clothing line has reportedly been a disappointment in several American department stores. (Huffington Post)

After conquering Vogue Italia in August, Lana Del Rey lands the cover of Vogue Australia’s October issue. While the rest of us are gearing up for the Fall season, the singer was styled in clothing for Spring! (Styleite)

Closing our list of fashion highlights for this week is Taylor Swift’s new video, which was released this week and is getting tons of views each day. It has already neared five million views. In the video, Swift introduces several outfit changes, from ridiculous pjs to a great floral dress at the end. Take a look:

William S. Burroughs’s Shot Gun Paintings

William S. Burroughs is cemented in the popular imagination as the archetypal literary outlaw, the third part of a holy trinity of Beats; father to Ginsberg’s son and Kerouac’s ghost. Novels including Junkie, Queer and Naked Lunch pioneered a new and uniquely American literary form, shamanistic and paranoid, sanctifying the outsider. But Burroughs’ experiments in form and creative process extended beyond writing into film, sound and the visual arts, and he spent much of his later years in Kansas making paintings. A selection of those works can be seen in All out of time and into space at October Gallery, London.

In advance of the opening I caught up with Kathelin Gray, founder of the Theater of all Possibilities and a close friend of Burroughs, to talk about the man, his paintings, and how the mythology surrounding the most American of artists might impede our appreciation of his work.

Burroughs is best known here as a writer, so I wonder if you could expand on the relationship between his literary and painterly practice.

Burroughs had associated with artists through the forties and fifties, the era of Abstract Expressionism and Action Painting. He was very influenced by process art, recombinant art, by art that incorporated incorporating text into paintings, and he was always concerned with the relationship between word and image. Burroughs thought in images, in symbols, and that’s visible in both his writing and his painting.

How influential was Brion Gysin on Burroughs’ work as a visual artist?

Gysin and Burroughs began to collaborate in Paris in 1959, when they were living together in the Beat Hotel. Gysin had steeped himself in the cabbalistic traditions of North Africa and his work drew heavily on ritual and magic; that influenced Burroughs, who was more scientific in his approach. Gysin introduced Burroughs to the cut up too – he realised one day, when he was cutting through newspaper with an Exacto knife, that the strips could be recombined and the word sequences re-examined.

What was so attractive about the cut up technique to Burroughs?

He saw it as a means of undermining the power structures that govern the behaviour of the populous. Burroughs was constantly trying to get at the way that things are programmed beneath the surface. The cut-up technique was one of the tools by which he did this, but not the only one.

What were the other tools, the other processes? With respect to the paintings I’m thinking of those abstract compositions creating by taking a shotgun to a can of spray paint…

Well I think Burroughs and Gysin met [auto-destructive artist] Gustav Metzger at one of his early lectures at Cambridge. Metzger was fed up with the commodification of art and was trying to get back to the act, the essence of what’s done by the artist in the moment of creation. That was another influence.

But Burroughs didn’t start painting until late in his life?

Burroughs really began painting in 1987, in Kansas, the year after Gysin died. Burroughs was devastated by Gysin’s death – he was the only man he ever truly respected as a man and an artist. You know, Burroughs only really started writing after he killed his wife Joan [in a drunken and famously ill-advised game of William Tell], and I think that taking up painting represented another way of working through trauma.

What of the way that Burroughs is perceived now?

I’m really not keen on the Burroughs stereotype of him with the needle in his arm and the three-piece suit, because that’s not what he was.

You don’t think he deliberately cultivated that iconography?

He cultivated the iconography but not the stereotype. I wouldn’t say that he resented the stereotype – it’s just that it’s counterproductive when it comes to understanding his work.

He was always keen to dissociate himself from the Beat Generation, which hasn’t stopped him being lumped in with them by posterity. How did he consider his work, and that of Gysin, to be different from that of Kerouac, Ginsberg or Gregory Corso?

He was a close friend with Ginsberg, particularly, but he wasn’t like the Beats – he wasn’t a Buddhist, he wasn’t Zen, he didn’t like jazz, he wasn’t cool. Burroughs’ work was about deconstructing the hypnotic effect on human nature of the corporate world, the military-industrial complex, and the military-educational complex. He was extremely concerned by the ecological devastation of the planet, by terrorism, by the militarisation of society, and he deeply wanted to create tools that would allow the individual to think for themselves. That drove everything that he did.

Benjamin Eastham

After The Weeknd

theweeknd

On “Enemy”, the first new song from The Weeknd this year outside of the three bonus tracks on his recent mixtape compilation Trilogy, Abel Tesfaye sings: “Cause the least I deserve is no conversation / I been working all week / I’d rather be your enemy / Then any friend you think I would be.” It finds the anonymous, disturbingly non-autonomous women (or is it the same woman?) that Tesfaye stalks in his songs finally completing their subjugation to dumb accessory. It’s the inevitable culmination of a narrative arc that’s seen him slide from ecstasy to detachment via depravity as, conversely, he’s risen from the internet’s fringe to mainstream validation.

But where does he go from here? In becoming music’s embodiment of Steve McQueen's Shame - the smirking sex addict desperate to expel his frozen feelings in bed yet painfully aware it’s but a momentary release from the emotional intimacy he cannot engage in - has he painted himself into a corner? As the desire gets cruder and the fantasies darker, the boredom kicks swifter when all you’re doing is chasing that first high.

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LuxuryActivist

LuxuryActivist is an international lifestyle webzine based in Switzerland. Get fresh news about luxury, arts, fashion, beauty, travel, high-tech and more. subscribe to our Happy friday luxury newsletter or follow us in social media.
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