infoTECH Feature

August 02, 2016

Comings & Goings: HPE Makes More Leadership Changes - Replacing Cloud & Storage Heads

Transformation: It’s a word communications and networking companies use frequently these days. But typically these entities use the term to describe what’s happening – or what they wish to happen as they leverage new technologies to improve their businesses. But, in the process, infrastructure solutions providers are going through something of a transformation of their own, and it doesn’t always follow a long-term, well-orchestrated plan.

Just take a look at what’s been happening at Hewlett-Packard (News - Alert) Enterprise.

Yesterday the company blogged that Manish Goel of its storage business and Bill Hilf of HP Cloud have left the company. Both men held the titles senior vice president and general manager. Goel has been replaced by Bill Philbin. Mark Interrante is now leading the cloud effort.

HPE also is moving its Helion OpenStack and Helion CloudSystem businesses into a new Software-Defined & Cloud Group, which Ric Lewis will lead, within the Enterprise Group. Lewis was previously the senior vice president and general manager of converged data center infrastructure.

These are only the most recent changes in leadership for HPE’s cloud effort. Two years ago Marten Mickos was named head of HPE’s cloud effort, following the company’s Eucalyptus acquisition, but was replaced by Hilf within months, Fortune reported.

Here are a few of the other recent changes at HPE:

• In late June, HPE announced plans to align its sales team into a single organization led by Peter Ryan.

• In May HPE spun off its enterprise services businesses into a new entity co-owned by CSC (News - Alert).

• Last year HPE was split off from its parent company HP.

Some of the recent changes at HPE may have been prompted by the fact that Telefonica (News - Alert) recently dropped the company as the lead technology provider and systems integrator for its UNICA network virtualization program. Telefonica later named Ericsson as its partner. Telefónica is one of the largest telecommunications companies in the world, with a significant presence in 21 countries and a customer base of 341 million.

“The decision to ditch HPE and start the process again, confirmed to Light Reading by the Spanish operator, shows just how hard it is going to be for large telecom operators to find partners that can fulfill their requirements and help build an open, non-proprietary next generation network,” according to a Dec. 24 piece.

Speaking of Ericsson (News - Alert), that company has been undergoing a few important changes as well.

Ericsson earlier this summer announced plans for a new organizational structure and followed that with the news that its long-time President and CEO Hans Vestberg had left the company.

According to IHS Technology, Ericsson is the leader in the telecommunications outsourcing services space, which was worth $69 billion in 2015 and is poised to reach $76 billion by 2020. Following Ericsson in this category are Huawei, HPE, IBM (News - Alert), and Nokia Networks.




Edited by Stefania Viscusi
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