# Sanjay Poonen

> Sanjay Poonen is the CEO and President of Cohesity, the data security and management company that absorbed Veritas' enterprise backup business in late 2024 to become the largest data protection vendor in the world. A Dartmouth-Stanford-Harvard alumnus who arrived in Boston at 18 with fifty dollars, he previously helped double revenues at both SAP (from ~$10B to ~$20B) and VMware (from ~$6B to ~$12B), where as COO he architected the landmark VMware-AWS partnership and the AirWatch acquisition.

- **Role:** CEO and President at Cohesity
- **Organizations:** Cohesity, Philips (Supervisory Board), Snyk (Board)
- **From:** Bangalore, India
- **Nationality:** Indian American
- **Education:** BA, Computer Science, Math and Engineering (summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa), Dartmouth College, MS, Management Science and Engineering, Stanford University, MBA (Baker Scholar, top 5%), Harvard Business School
- **Known for:** Holds two patents, Baker Scholar at Harvard Business School (top 5%), Summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa at Dartmouth

## Career timeline

- **early 1990s** — Software engineer at Microsoft, then Apple
- **2000s** — Executive roles at Informatica, AmberPoint, Symantec
- **2009-2013** — President of SAP, leading Applications, Industries and Platform; revenues grew from ~$10B to ~$20B
- **2013-2021** — Executive at VMware, ultimately COO; revenues doubled from ~$6B to ~$12B
- **2014** — Led VMware's $1.54B acquisition of AirWatch
- **2016** — Architected the landmark VMware-AWS cloud partnership
- **2022-08-01** — Named CEO and President of Cohesity
- **2024-12-10** — Completed $3B merger with Veritas' data protection business

## Achievements

- Holds two patents
- Baker Scholar at Harvard Business School (top 5%)
- Summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa at Dartmouth
- Architected VMware-AWS strategic partnership
- Led AirWatch acquisition at VMware
- Closed Cohesity-Veritas merger creating the largest data protection vendor
- Serves on Supervisory Board of Philips and Board of Snyk

## Latest updates

- **2024-12** — Closed the $3B Cohesity-Veritas data protection merger; combined entity now serves more than 12,000 enterprise customers.
- **2025-01** — Cohesity rolled out integration milestones and AI-led data security roadmap under the combined org.

## Links

- Website: https://www.cohesity.com
- LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sanjaypoonen
- Twitter/X: https://twitter.com/spoonen
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/sanjayjpoonen/

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Profile page: https://yespress.io/sanjay-poonen
Published by YesPress — https://yespress.io
Last updated: 2026-05-30