HP CEO Leo Apotheker signaled last quarter that the company was mulling changes to executive lineup in the wake of disappointing earnings, and today the company announced the departure of chief information officer Randy Mott as well as chief administrative officer Pete Bocian. That’s not all: HP is also transferring 29-year veteran Ann Livermore to a seat on the company’s board and out of day-to-day operations, and shifting three key executives in charge of servers, software, and global sales so they report to Apotheker directly.
HP characterized the changes as aligning the corporate structure more closely with a new strategy the company outlined last March. March also saw a significant shift in HP’s board of directors, expanding from 13 to 17 members with new members essentially selected by new CEO Leo Apotheker.
Regarding the departure of Bocian and Mott, HP said it planned to eliminate the position of chief administration officer and will distribute the roles of that organization throughout other areas of HP. HP will conduct a search for a new chief information officer who will fill a “broadened” role win the company, including global procurement and volume operations.
Mott had been hired out of Wal-Mart by former CEO Mark Hurd back in 2005, and oversaw a major consolidation and centralization effort in HP’s own IT operations: during Mott’s tenure, HP centralized from over more than six dozen data centers around the world to six major global data centers—a move that has proved significant in HP’s effort to transition enterprises to cloud-bases services—and instituted new accountability and efficiency measures across HP’s IT efforts.
Livermore will continue to manage HP’s Enterprise Services operations until HP names a successor her. Apotheker has been critical of how HP handled its 2008 acquisition of Electronic Data Systems (EDS), saying the company failed to invest adequately in developing new services after the acquisition, instead focussing on integrating EDS into HP’s operations.
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