Storage giant EMC and virtualisation provider VMware have announced the creation of a new ‘virtual organisation’ that will sell big data and cloud-related technologies.

Named the ‘Pivotal Initiative’, the new organisation will be lead by VMware’s former CEO Paul Maritz and will have 1,400 employees.

It will be made up of 800 employees of EMC’s Greenplum data warehouse and Pivotal Labs software development divisions, and 600 from VMware’s Vfabric and Cloud Foundry cloud infrastructure units and its Cetas big data analytics division.

In a blog post on Tuesday, VMware vice president of global corporate communications Terry Anderson said the move was a response to a “wide scale change to cloud computing, which includes both infrastructural transformation and transformation of how applications will be built and used on cloud, mobility and big data”.

“There is a significant opportunity for both VMware and EMC to provide thought and technology leadership, not only at the infrastructure level, but across the rapidly growing and fast-moving application development and big data markets,” wrote Anderson.

“Aligning these resources is the best way for the combined companies to leverage the transformational period, and drive more quickly towards the rising opportunities,” she wrote.

According to Anderson, EMC’s big data, analytics, cloud and software-defined data technologies will benefit from new levels of investment brought by the initiative.

Simultaneously, realigning resources within the Pivotal Iniative will allow VMware to focus on delivering the "software-defined data centre", the virtualised infrastructure at the heart of cloud computing, she said.

Both companies are due to provide updates on the initiative in spring 2013.