Michael is the founder and principal of Capellas Partners, a strategic technology advisory firm. He currently serves on the board of Cisco Systems where he chairs the acquisition and investment committees.  He is also a senior advisor to Blackstone and is a member of the Deutsche Bank Advisory Board.

Michael’s career as a global technology leader has spanned from innovative technology start-ups to large corporate turnarounds.

For fifteen years he worked for Schlumberger followed by positions at software leaders Oracle and SAP.
In 1999, Michael was named CEO of Compaq Computer and one year later added the title of Chairman. During his tenure, the company became the global leader in computer servers. He served as President of Hewlett Packard following the merger of the two companies.

In 2002, he was recruited as Chairman and CEO to restructure Worldcom following its bankruptcy and transformed it from long distance provider into the world’s largest carrier of internet traffic. The company emerged from bankruptcy as MCI.

After MCI was acquired by Verizon, he served as Chairman and CEO of First Data Corporation, a global leader in payments and electronic commerce.

In 2009, Michael was appointed as founding Chairman and CEO of VCE, the Virtual Computing Company, a joint venture between Cisco, EMC and VMware which developed and commercialized an innovative platform for cloud computing.

In 2011, Michael was appointed co-chair of the Commission on U.S. Deployment of the Cloud (Cloud2). 

Michael has served on the national board of the Boys and Girls Club of America and currently chairs the technology committee. He is the recipient of the Hope Technology Award given by the National Center for Missing and Exploited Children. He graduated from Kent State University.