Ravi Bhat has been appointed at the new regional director for VMware, ending months of speculation about who will lead the local office of one of the fastest-growing IT companies in the world.

Bhat’s most recent position was as director of the IBM Software Group at IBM, following a number of other positions with IBM Software as well as at IBM group company Lotus Development, which he joined in 1996.

The post of VMware regional director has been empty for some months since the departure of Chris Norton, who left to pursue new challenges.

Steve English, on loan from VMware in Europe, has been caretaking the position in the interim as acting regional director.

VMware itself has grown rapidly from a server virtualisation company to one of the leaders in the new software-defined data centre space that seeks to virtualise the full range of IT infrastructure.