Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) announced a series of changes to its organizational structure and executive leadership, including the creation of a new Hybrid Cloud business unit. The shakeup aims to streamline operations, focus on key growth areas and unify the portfolio under the successful HPE GreenLake brand.

HPE President and CEO Antonio Neri revealed in a blog post that the new Hybrid Cloud business unit will be led by the company's CTO Fidelma Russo. The unit will integrate the HPE GreenLake platform with technologies and services of HPE Storage, GreenLake Cloud Services Solutions, and the current Office of the CTO.

“The Hybrid Cloud business unit will accelerate our hybrid cloud strategy as we deliver one portfolio of storage, software, data and cloud services on the HPE GreenLake platform,” Neri wrote.

HPE launched the GreenLake platform in 2017, aiming to have the vendor’s entire portfolio delivered as as-a-service. The platform offers more than 70 cloud services across the enterprise computing stack, including GreenLake for Private Cloud Enterprise, data fabric, hyperconverged infrastructure (HCI), block storage, disaster recovery, backup and recovery, compute operations management, and industry-vertical cloud services for customer engagement and payments.

Neri touted that currently, the platform supports 27,000 unique customer logos and 3.4 million connected devices. “The scale and strength of HPE GreenLake is evident,” he wrote. GreenLake “is now the central offering for all of our Hybrid Cloud solutions, and developed, tested, and integrated new services and launched them on the platform.”

For the past two years, CTO Fidelma Russo has led the team that built the GreenLake platform. She joined HPE in 2021 to lead the innovation agenda and technology roadmap while managing the design and development of the portfolio to deliver the GreenLake platform. Previously, Russo was senior VP and GM of the Cloud Services business unit at VMware.

In the new role to lead the Hybrid Cloud business unit Russo “will continue to bring revolutionary new offerings to bear for our global customers, helping HPE realize our distinct advantage as we pursue opportunities in the hybrid cloud market,” Neri said.

Within the Hybrid Cloud business unit, Tom Black, executive VP and GM of HPE Storage, will lead the private cloud team. For the past three years, Black led HPE's storage business group, overseeing its transformation into a data services business and launching the HPE Alletra portfolio and its first storage-as-a-service offerings.

The HPE shakeup will also lead to the departure of some key leaders. Vishal Lall, senior VP and GM of HPE’s GreenLake Cloud Services Solutions group will exit the company at the end of this year, Neri announced.

Lall has contributed to multiple HPE initiatives during his decade-long career with the company, including GreenLake, Aruba, Ezmeral and Hewlett Packard Pathfinder.

In another major departure, Pradeep Kumar, the head of HPE Services and a 27-year veteran of the company, is set to retire. His leaving sets the stage for further organizational alignment. “With Pradeep’s retirement, we will now put the key operational activities for all of our products and services under one leader,” Neri said.

Now, HPE Services, Supply Chain and Quote-to-Cash will be combined into the Global Operations organization, which will continue to be led by Mark Bakker, executive VP and GM of HPE Global Operations.

The organizational structure and executive leadership changes will take effect at the start of HPE's 2024 fiscal year on November 1, 2023, to “further unify our portfolio and enhance the delivery of a true cloud experience for our customers and partners,” Neri wrote.

“I said during my first days as CEO that the enterprise of the future would be edge-centric, cloud-enabled and data-driven,” he added. “That vision from nearly six years ago has turned into strategy, then innovation, and ultimately into strong momentum for HPE and business outcomes for customers and partners in every industry.”

Neri noted the changes are aligned with the transformation journey to an edge-to-cloud company.

“Bringing together the technologies and services at the core of the HPE GreenLake brand under one organization is the next logical step in our transformation and will enable us to drive the unification, simplification and acceleration of our hybrid cloud strategy,” a spokesperson at HPE wrote to SDxCentral in an email.