It did not take long for Eric Gales to find gainful employment.
Just months after being replaced as Microsoft Canada president, Gales has been named the new country manager of VMware Canada, according to a two sources with knowledge of the situation.
CDN has also learned tha t Grant Aitken, who has been running VMware Canada since 2004 will have his title slightly altered. Aitken you might recall was CDN’s Top Newsmaker for 2008. Aitken is Area Vice President, Enterprise Sales for VMware Canada. Gales’ title Country Vice President, Canada.
Gales has a start date of Nov. 5th at VMware Canada although his announcement as VMware Country Manager is slated for Nov. 12, according to one source. His biggest challenge will be promoting VMware’s Hypervisor ESX/ESXi over rival Microsoft’s Hyper-V after years of saying the Microsoft product was better.
Gales was replaced as Microsoft Canada president just months before the software giant welcomed 15,000 partners to Toronto for the Worldwide Partner Conference. Microsoft replaced Gales with Maxwell (Max) Long, a UK native who most recently served as vice-president of corporate accounts for the Microsoft’s worldwide small and mid-market solutions and partner group (SM&P) in Seattle.Gales was promoted to the role of subsidiary president in June of 2009 replacing Phil Sorgen, who had been promoted to lead Microsoft’s small and mid-market solutions and partners division for the U.S. from Seattle after nearly four years leading the Canadian subsidiary. Gales had previously led the SM&P group in Canada.
Gales was a fixture on CDN’s Top 25 Newsmaker list during his tenure leading the subsidiary, rising to No. 2 in 2010 for his role bringing Microsoft’s Software+Services cloud business to Canada, as well as Microsoft Office 2010 and Windows Phone 7. He was No. 3 in 2009 and No. 6 in 2011. He has been campaigning to bring Microsoft’s retail store model to Canada to showcase Microsoft and partner solutions, and also played a key role in bringing the Worldwide Partner Conference to Toronto this July.
He was also a visible leader and advocate for Microsoft and the technology community in Canada, serving as a vice-chair of the Information Technology Association of Canada.
Gales told CDN that he planned to take the summer off after helping Long with the transitional period and then decide his next career move.
