Two senior executives from Hewlett-Packard’s Enterprise Systems Group have resigned.
Peter Blackmore, executive vice president in charge of Enterprise Systems Group, announced in an internal memo to the company on September 5 that Howard Elias, who was just named senior vice president of business operations and management (BMO) for the newly created ESG back in May, had resigned. Hugh Jenkins, vice president of marketing for the Intel-based server line within Enterprise Systems Group, turned in his last day at HP on September 12.
Both executives come from the Compaq side of the HP house, as does Mr Blackmore. There will be much made of this in the press. Mark Sorenson, who used to run HP’s storage unit and who was from Compaq, has just jumped ship to rival EMC.
HP’s competitors are, of course, making the rounds trying to drum up stories that suggest that the departure of Mr Elias is due to HP’s missed numbers. HP spokeperson Tim Marklein said that Mr Elias left the company voluntarily, as did Mr Jenkins.
With Mr Elias’ departure, the executives of various ESG units will now assume his responsibilities and report directly to Mr Blackmore. As is often the case in complex organizations with ambitious executives, the job that Mr Elias was given may not have had enough meat to it to suit his taste. Indeed, there is speculation that he may have wanted Scott Stollard’s job as senior vice president of the Enterprise Storage and Servers unit inside HP, which brings all the hardware units into one organization.
Given the vagueness of the BMO job, and the tough times HP is facing in enterprise systems, it is no surprise that Mr Elias decided to pursue other interests, although neither ex-exec will reveal his plans. According to HP, UK-born Mr Jenkins is particularly interested in relocating back to his home country. A replacement has not been named for Mr Jenkins yet, but his position will be filled, said HP.
Source: Computerwire/Datamonitor
