VMware's security chief leaves to run OpenDNS

IDG News Service - The head of VMware's Inc.'s security group has left to become the CEO of OpenDNS LLC, a San Francisco-based start-up that provides Internet infrastructure services through a network of DNS servers.

Nand Mulchandani took over as the top executive at OpenDNS on Nov. 5, according to a company spokeswoman. He replaced OpenDNS founder David Ulevitch, who will remain as the company's chief technology officer.

Mulchandani is the latest VMware executive to leave the virtualization vendor, following the ouster of CEO Diane Greene in July. Mendel Rosenblum, Greene's husband and a fellow VMware co-founder, resigned from his job as the company's chief scientist in September. Richard Sarwal, who was VMware's executive vice president of research and development operations, also quit that month to take a job at Oracle Corp.

In an interview on Thursday, Mulchandani said Greene's departure had nothing to do with his decision to take the OpenDNS post. "This was just an incredible opportunity," he said. "Too good to pass by."

Mulchandani had been with VMware for just over a year, having joined the company after it acquired security software vendor Determina Inc., where he was CEO. As VMware's senior director of security products, Mulchandani was in charge of the company's security strategy, which is considered critical to its future success in the face of increasing competition from Microsoft Corp. and other virtualization rivals. VMware's stock is publicly traded, but the majority of the company is owned by storage vendor EMC Corp.

As CEO of OpenDNS, Mulchandani plans to expand the company's consumer business while also working to take its services into the enterprise. For example, he said that the company's DNS servers could be used to help support branch offices and remote workers, or to serve as backup DNS systems for enterprise users. "We don't believe our job is going to be to replace enterprise DNS," Mulchandani said. "But we believe there's an opportunity to compliment these on-premise or in-cloud services."

Although ISPs typically provide DNS services to their customers, OpenDNS is trying to attract customers by promising faster DNS lookups and by offering added features that, for example, let users block dangerous or inappropriate servers from reaching their networks.

OpenDNS, which earns revenue by providing search-based ads to users of its services, currently handles between 8 billion and 9 billion DNS lookups per day.