Capellas to Run Cisco, EMC Ventures

Cisco Systems Inc. and EMC Corp. picked veteran technology executive Michael Capellas to lead two multi-company organizations that the tech giants formed last year to push a concept called cloud computing to corporate customers.

Mr. Capellas, 55 years old, will lead what the two companies call the Virtual Computing Environment coalition. He will also become chief executive officer of a Cisco-EMC joint venture called Acadia, which also received funding from Intel Corp. and VMware Inc. The moves are expected to be formally announced Thursday.

Mr. Capellas is known in high-tech circles for stints as chief executive of MCI Inc.—purchased in ...