HP Announces Leadership Changes to Drive Ongoing Turnaround; COO to Become Executive VP

HP HPQ today announced changes to its executive leadership team that will help the company accelerate its turnaround. 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. 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