Don Ferguson, CTO of Dell Software, is leaving the company, a Dell spokeswoman confirmed Thursday.

Ferguson, who spent years at IBM(IBM), CA(CA) (formerly Computer Associates) and Microsoft(MSFT), joined Dell three years ago as CTO of the software unit, according to his LinkedIn profile.

And, Nnamdi Orakwue, a former IBMer who came aboard in 2011 and for a time was Michael Dell’s executive assistant before being named vice president of cloud and then vice president of software, is also leaving.

She said both execs are off to pursue other interests.

And, there are more departures: George Reese, who joined Dell via that company’s acquisition of Enstratius two years ago, is also leaving, sources confirmed. Reese was senior distinguished engineer and executive director for Dell’s Cloud Solutions Group.

No other details were forthcoming, but it seems likely that the departures are related to Dell’s proposed $67 billion planned buyout of EMC (EMC).

“You’ll have churn at a time like this particularly since a lot of the assets Dell is acquiring are in software,” said Patrick Moorhead, president of Moor Insights & Strategy, an Austin, Texas research firm. If the purchase goes through, Dell also will own a big chunk of VMware(VMW), an enterprise software company.

The executive departures come among rumors of wider cutbacks at the Round Rock, Texas company. The spokeswoman would only say the company always works to streamline operations as part of a continuous review, adding that Dell is also trying to hire 2,000 sales people worldwide.

For more on EMC-Dell-VMware see the video:

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This story was updated with news of George Reese’s departure.