Paul Maritz

Paul Maritz (born 1955) is a computer scientist and software executive. He held positions at large companies including Microsoft and EMC Corporation.

Life

Paul Maritz was born and raised in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). His family later moved to South Africa where he was schooled at Highbury Preparatory School and Hilton College. He received a B.Sc. in Computer Science from the University of Natal, and a B.Sc. (Hons) degree, also in Computer Science, from the University of Cape Town in 1977.

After finishing his graduate studies, Maritz had a programming job with Burroughs Corporation and later became a researcher at the University of St. Andrews in Scotland, before moving to Silicon Valley in 1981 to join Intel. He worked for Intel for five years, including developing early tools to help developers write software for the then-new x86 platform, before joining Microsoft in 1986.

From 1986 to 2000 he worked at Microsoft, becoming executive vice president of the Platforms Strategy and Developer Group and part of the 5-person executive management team. He was often said to be the third-ranking executive, behind Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer. He was responsible for essentially all of Microsoft's desktop and server software, including such major initiatives as the development of Windows 95, Windows NT, and Internet Explorer. He was the highest-ranking executive to testify at the antitrust trial of Microsoft in 1999. While at Microsoft, Maritz was credited with originating the term "eating your own dogfood" also known as dogfooding.