Bill Veghte, HP's chief operating officer (COO), will become executive vice president and general manager of the HP Enterprise Group, a role that will now include responsibility for the coordinated development of the company's portfolio of cloud solutions. Dave Donatelli will take on a new role focused on identifying early-stage technologies as he did successfully with 3PAR and 3Com.
In a separate organizational move, HP will combine its Marketing and Communications organizations under the leadership of Chief Communications Officer Henry Gomez.
All of the changes are effective immediately.
HP Enterprise Group
Bill Veghte brings a critical set of skills to the management of the HP Enterprise Group. Veghte is a proven technology executive with a wide range of experiences leading sales, services, marketing and engineering at scale. During his tenure at HP, he has run HP Software, held the responsibility of chief strategy officer and, over the last 15 months, served as HP's COO.
As COO, Veghte helped create HP's blueprint for the future, and he deeply understands the strategic challenges and opportunities facing both the company and its customers. He understands how HP operates and how to create comprehensive solutions that help HP's customers capitalize on the enormous shift toward the "New Style of IT."
As hardware becomes more standardized, leadership solutions are increasingly differentiated by the software layer that drives the hardware. This is true for both traditional IT and cloud environments. Veghte's experiences in software and in the enterprise, combined with HP's infrastructure leadership, will help HP accelerate innovation in converged infrastructure, cloud and the emerging area of software-defined data centers.
Veghte will retain his current responsibility for the pan-HP cloud initiative. Since the HP Enterprise Group provides the foundational infrastructure for all of HP's cloud offerings, the alignment of these two portfolios under a single leader will improve time to market for HP's Converged Cloud solutions.
"Bill's vision for the future of IT, his breadth of experience in the industry and at HP, and his deep enterprise experience, make him the ideal candidate to help HP navigate a rapidly changing market," said Meg Whitman, HP president and chief executive officer. "Dave succeeded in pioneering converged infrastructure, bridging servers, storage and networking. Looking forward, the software-defined data center and cloud computing offers us a great opportunity to extend HP's leadership in the technology infrastructure space."
Donatelli's new role will focus on identifying early-stage companies with new technologies, similar to HP Moonshot and HP StoreOnce, which he brought to market. This will help HP develop future server, storage and networking solutions. As part of this effort, he will work with select venture capital firms to explore targeted companies in their pipelines. HP will announce more specific details about this effort at a later date. Donatelli will continue to report to Whitman.
There are currently no immediate plans to select a new COO after Veghte transitions to his new role.
HP Marketing and Communications
Henry Gomez will assume the additional responsibility of chief marketing officer (CMO). The company's current CMO, Marty Homlish, will become HP's chief customer experience officer, a new role that will focus on driving more consistent and high-value interactions with customers across all business units. After successfully launching HP's new brand, Homlish is uniquely qualified for this new role, which will include leading the company's executive sponsor program, customer advisory boards and executive briefing centers. These activities touch many of HP's top customers on an ongoing basis.
Gomez, who joined HP at the beginning of 2012, has extensive marketing and communications experience from his 27-year career. By combining both marketing and communications under Gomez's leadership, HP hopes to accelerate programs that will drive sales, build brand loyalty and help customers embrace the New Style of IT. In his expanded role, Gomez will keep responsibility for HP Government Relations. Both Gomez and Homlish will continue to report to Whitman.
"One of the benefits of having a deep and talented executive bench is that you can put people with the right skills in the right jobs at the right moments," said Whitman. "This is especially important when your industry is undergoing profound change and you need to rapidly respond with fresh ideas and bold execution. I'm confident that the changes we announced today will speed our journey to a successful turnaround."
Note to editors: Meg Whitman and Bill Veghte posted comments regarding this announcement at www.hpnext.com.
About HP
HP creates new possibilities for technology to have a meaningful impact on people, businesses, governments and society. With the broadest technology portfolio spanning printing, personal systems, software, services and IT infrastructure, HP delivers solutions for customers' most complex challenges in every region of the world. More information about HP is available at
http://www.hp.com.
This news release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks, uncertainties and assumptions. If such risks or uncertainties materialize or such assumptions prove incorrect, the results of HP and its consolidated subsidiaries could differ materially from those expressed or implied by such forward-looking statements and assumptions. All statements other than statements of historical fact are statements that could be deemed forward-looking statements, including but not limited to statements of the plans, strategies and objectives of management for future operations; any statements concerning expected development, performance, market share or competitive performance relating to products and services; any statements regarding anticipated operational and financial results; any statements of expectation or belief; and any statements of assumptions underlying any of the foregoing. Risks, uncertainties and assumptions include the need to address the many challenges facing HP's businesses; the competitive pressures faced by HP's businesses; risks associated with executing HP's strategy; the impact of macroeconomic and geopolitical trends and events; the need to manage third party suppliers and the distribution of HP's products and services effectively; the protection of HP's intellectual property assets, including intellectual property licensed from third parties; risks associated with HP's international operations; the development and transition of new products and services and the enhancement of existing products and services to meet customer needs and respond to emerging technological trends; the execution and performance of contracts by HP and its suppliers, customers and partners; the hiring and retention of key employees; integration and other risks associated with business combination and investment transactions; the execution, timing and results of restructuring plans, including estimates and assumptions related to the cost and the anticipated benefits of implementing those plans; the resolution of pending investigations, claims and disputes; and other risks that are described in HP's Quarterly Report on Form 10-Q for the fiscal quarter ended April 30, 2013 and HP's other filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission, including HP's Annual Report on Form 10-K for the fiscal year ended October 31, 2012. HP assumes no obligation and does not intend to update these forward-looking statements.
© 2013 Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. The information contained herein is subject to change without notice. HP shall not be liable for technical or editorial errors or omissions contained herein.
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