Eighteen-year VMware veteran Jeff Jennings exited the company to join Google in mid February, according to Business Insider. Jennings will join VMware Founder and Former CEO Diane Greene, who joined Google Cloud in 2015 to lead the effort. Jennings will serve as vice president of customer engineering at Google Cloud.

Jennings joined VMware in 2000 and held a number of roles during his tenure. For the last year-and-a-half, Jennings was the senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s networking and security business.

As VMware looks for a permanent replacement for Jennings, the company's COO for products and cloud services Rajiv Ramaswami will temporarily assume the role.

This business unit is charged with the development of NSX, its virtualization and security platform and one of its fastest-growing products. In its fiscal 2018 third quarter earnings call with investors, VMware touted the platform's expansion and success, further enabled by its purchase of VeloCloud.

His departure follows some layoffs — as well as merger rumors — at VMware. In January, documents filled with the state of California showed that the company planned to lay off 159 employees beginning March 12. These layoffs are said to include marketing jobs, as well as staff engineers, senior directors, consultants, and research and development leaders.

In addition, Dell Technologies and VMware are considering a realignment of their relationship. Dell could potentially buy 100 percent of VMware. It currently owns 80 percent of the company. Or VMware may acquire Dell Technologies. Dell confirmed that there was substance to these rumors in February, saying that it is considering “potential business opportunities,” including a “combination with VMware” in a document filed February 2 with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission.

As Jennings works with Greene once again, he will also join Google Cloud's growing team of executives, including long-time Intel exec Diane Bryant, who joined in November 2017 as the COO and former CEO of Cloud Foundry Sam Ramji, who joined Google Cloud in 2016 as its VP of product management.