Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) saw a blow to its virtualization efforts with the departure of hybrid cloud COO Hang Tan.

First reported by CRN, Tan left after two and a half years in the role. The exec has since revealed he has joined IT solutions provider CDW, serving as chief strategy and transformation officer.

Upon his departure from HPE, he wrote on LinkedIn: "It has been a privilege to work alongside such a talented and diverse group of leaders and teams – individuals who care about outcomes, customers, and doing the right thing, even when the work is hard. ... I am proud to have contributed to HPE's transformation over the past six and a half years."

In his prior role, Hang was responsible for the hybrid cloud business's strategy and operations, reporting to the unit's chief, Fidelma Russo.

It includes HPE CloudOps Software Suite, OpsRamp, Zerto, and – more crucially – VM Essentials and Morpheus, with the two products lynchpins in HPE's strategy to claw some of the virtualization market away from Broadcom's grasp in the wake of the chip giant's VMware acquisition.

In its September earnings call, HPE CEO Antonio Neri touted opportunities for HPE to grow its virtualization business in light of “rising costs” following that acquisition.

“We have an enormous amount of proof of concepts (PoC) going on with our Morpheus and VM Essentials,” Neri said. “What we really focus there is the conversion of PoCs to revenue.”

The HPE chief had previously explained that the vendor’s virtual machine (VM) management platform “gives an alternative to the VMware stuff, but at the same time it allows you to manage the VMware stack and other stacks.”

Tan's role in this strategy was highlighted by CRN's interview with HPE partner PKA Technologies, with the exec credited for establishing HPE software as "a force to be reckoned with" in the virtualization market. This was based on HPE VM Essentials offering a cheaper alternative to Broadcom VMware and providing considerable multicloud management benefits to partners through the unified hybrid cloud suite.

Tan joined HPE in 2019 as chief strategy officer, following a decade-long stint as partner for Bain & Company's technology practice. Prior to Bain, Tan worked in various software and hardware design engineer roles for Microsoft, Alcatel, Cypress Semiconductors, and Altera.

Update: An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated Hang formed HPE's hybrid cloud unit. This has since been removed and the article amended.