It’s one in, one out at Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) as the firm brings on board a NetApp veteran to lead its worldwide hybrid cloud channel, while losing one of its global product and strategy leaders.

According to CRN, Kristian Kerr will be joining HPE in the new role of VP of its worldwide hybrid cloud channel. The Brit leaves his position as VP of Europe, Middle East, and Africa (EMEA) and Latin America (LatAm) of NetApp's Partner Organization, where he served for more than seven years.

Kerr’s move is home from home in some ways for the new VP, as the exec previously worked as Juniper Networks’ head of EMEA channels, alliances, and commercial between 2017 and 2018, leading what his LinkedIn described as a $1 billion operation at the time.

HPE’s new hire began his career as a trader before pivoting to Cisco in 1998 as an account reseller executive. Thirteen years later, Kerr left Cisco as a manager for its strategic partners and alliances to become an enterprise sales director for Verizon, also based in London. He would then become senior director for Brocade’s channel and OEM organization before jumping over to Juniper.

Commenting on Kerr’s hire, Simon Ewington, HPE SVP of worldwide channel and partner ecosystem, said: “Kristian brings an exceptional breadth of experience in channel and alliance leadership roles across data services and networking, covering both mature and emerging markets. His experience in the IT and communications industry has spanned 25-plus years, having held senior roles at NetApp, Juniper Networks, Cisco, and Brocade.”

Pat O’Dell, managing partner at long-term HPE partner CPP Associates and head of the HPE North America Partner Advisory Council, added: “The experience that he [Kerr] brings from NetApp, Juniper, Cisco, and Brocade is impressive. At the end of the day, with networking accounting for more than 50% of HPE’s profits and storage as one of the most profitable areas for partners, bringing someone on board that knows Cisco and has deep storage experience seems like an exceptional addition to the HPE management team.”

As Kerr comes aboard ship HPE, Ziad Hadi is disembarking after almost nine years at the business.

Currently HPE’s senior manager for global product, the Canada-based Hadi began as a senior engineer for HPE Aruba Networking in 2019. Almost four years later, he became senior global product manager for mainline HPE, before rising to his global product role.

Writing on LinkedIn, Hadi wrote: “After nearly nine years, I’ve made the bittersweet decision to leave Hewlett Packard Enterprise. In this time, I’ve had the incredible privilege of being the first Pakistani-Canadian to work across channel sales, sales engineering, product management, GTM (go-to-market), and technical marketing leadership paths.

“I leave with confidence in the direction of HPE Networking. … Grateful to have played a small part in the journey to self-driving networks, excited for what’s next!” Hadi wrote, adding he had appreciation for some of HPE’s leaders and in “shaping what comes next” at HPE.

Hadi, who did not disclose his new role, follows in the footsteps of other veterans leaving HPE in the wake of its Juniper Networks acquisition. These include Juniper VP for technical solutions architecture Pavan Kurapati, who decided to leave HPE to become Nokia's SVP and CTO for data center networking.

The exodus has also included Juniper global partner and channel VP Gordon Mackintosh, who, as revealed by SDxCentral, went on to an Equinix role in December, while EMEA VP Gos Hein van de Wouw defected to join cloud network firm Extreme Networks in the same month. Preceding them was chief network strategist Neil McRae, who pivoted to U.K. broadband firm CityFibre in December.