January was a big month for firings, hirings, and retirings. Thus we have broken up our monthly Headcount column into two parts to make it easier to digest. Here is Pt. 1 of the latest executive hirings, promotions, and staff changes that happened in January. And check back tomorrow for Pt. 2. If you’d like SDxCentral to report on your company’s movers and shakers, or if you’ve got a tip about layoffs and restructuring, please send the information to Sydney Sawaya ([email protected]).

IBM shook up its executive suite naming current SVP for cloud and cognitive software Arvind Krishna to replace long-tenured President and CEO Ginni Rometty effective April 6. Additionally, Red Hat CEO Jim Whitehurst will take on the role of IBM president, effective the same day as Krishna’s rise. The moves take IBM’s Red Hat integration up a notch as the computing giant elevates key players in that deal to leadership positions.

Krishna, who will also become a member of IBM’s board, was a principal architect of IBM’s $34 billion Red Hat acquisition that closed last summer. That deal was the biggest in IBM’s storied history and set it firmly on course to focus its efforts on cloud and virtualization.

Rometty’s exit plan will see her stay on as CEO until April 6, remain executive chairman of IBM’s board until the end of the year, and then retire after nearly 40 years at the company. She had been IBM’s CEO since 2012, and during her tenure oversaw 65 acquisitions and reoriented Big Blue toward a more cloud-centric future. This included the Red Hat acquisition.

Nokia’s sagging financial performance resulted in more job losses in Finland this year. The vendor announced plans to cut about 180 jobs in its home country in January and hinted at more to come.

This latest wave of job losses for the vendor are being driven by the company’s ongoing goal to reduce costs by $556 million by the end of 2020. Nokia previously slashed its profit outlook through 2020 amid heightened competition in the early stages of 5G deployments.

The company expects its recovery efforts to result in improved financial performance in 2021, but the reduced guidance contrasts with Ericsson, which is forecasting growth through 2020.

Bill Menees was named VP of DevOps at Equinox Information Systems.

Juniper Networks welcomed Gordon Mackintosh as its new worldwide VP of channel and virtual sales. Mackintosh previously served as global head of channels and distribution at Extreme Networks. 

Silver Peak appointed Ian Whiting as president of global field operations. Whiting was formerly president of Ruckus Networks 

Localization automation provider Cloudwords welcomed Heidi Bullock to its board of directors. Bullock currently serves as CMO at Tealium. 

Computer Data Source announced former HiveIO CEO Dan Newton as its new CEO. 

Commvault’s global leadership team gained two new additions including former Dell Technologies VP and GM of enterprise sales Marco Fanizzi, and Callum Eade, former VP for the software defined data center business at VMware. Fanizzi will serve as VP of EMEA, and Eade as a VP. 

5G Americas elected AT&T’s Igal Elbaz as chairman and re-elected Ericsson's Jim Nevelle as treasurer. 

AttackIQ hired Pedro Vidal as VP of North America sales and announced the promotion of Stacey Meyer to VP of federal operations.

Green House Data added Victor Tingler to its executive management team as SVP of digital transformation.

Cloud data integration and data integrity provider Talend named Elizabeth Fetter to its board of directors. Fetter succeeds John Brennan, who stepped down after nine years on Talend’s board.

SnapLogic appointed Dayle Hall as its new CMO. Hall most recently served as CMO at People.ai.

AlefEdge welcomed Paul Palmieri and David Kiger to its board of directors. 

Security and compliance automation provider DivvyCloud announced the appointments of Brandie Kalinowski as VP of people and culture and David Geevaratne as VP of North American sales.

Darren Kimura joined Spin Technology’s board of directors as its new executive chairman.

Imperva welcomed Nanhi Singh as its new chief customer officer and Paul Loftus as its new chief revenue officer.

Cloudera named Robert Bearden as its new president and CEO. Bearden was most recently CEO at Docker.

Nikki Brewer was promoted to a new role as chief people officer at PROS.

Tuomas Laine was appointed as CFO at CUJO AI. Laine was most recently VP of finance at F-Secure.