HP Promotes Bill Veghte from Software Business to COO

Hewlett-Packard (News - Alert) announced that Bill Veghte, former Microsoft executive running HP’s software business, would now take over as the company’s new chief operating officer.

George Kadifa, who previously worked for Silver Lake, a private equity firm, will now be responsible for handling all of HP’s business software.

Veghte, who lives in Palo Alto (News - Alert), California, received his Bachelor of Arts in East Asian studies from Harvard University. Before joining HP, Veghte spent two decades working at Microsoft in a variety of senior leadership positions in departments ranging from sales to engineering.

Before leaving Microsoft (News - Alert), Veghte managed the company’s global Windows business, estimated to be worth around $15 billion.

After being passed for a promotion at Microsoft, Veghte joined HP back in 2010 and helped grow HP’s software business by 18 percent. As the executive vice president of HP Software, Veghte was in charge of overseeing the $3.2-billion department that provides software and solutions that help IT organizations perform better.

HP’s CEO Meg Whitman, only hired eight months ago, said Veghte has performed so well as the HP’s chief strategy officer that it seemed like the right decision to promote him. “Bill has done an excellent job delivering strong results in HP Software, and more recently helping us focus our efforts in the execution of our strategy,” said Whitman.

It’s rumored that Veghte is being groomed for Whitman’s position when she decides to retire. In previous articles, HP confirmed its next CEO would be promoted from within the company. Although Whitman never announced plans to retire and HP has not confirmed that Veghte would even be considered for the position, it’s easy to assume based on Veghte’s quick move up the executive ladder.

HP is clearly in a transitional period right now. Just last week the company announced plans to cut 27,000 employees across the company, despite seeing higher than expected second quarter earnings. Whitman said the layoffs would be spread out over the next two years through to the end of 2014, in order to help reduce the long-term harm to morale with the company.