IBM President Jim Whitehurst is stepping down 18 months after the former Red Hat CEO took the position, which came in the wake of IBM’s $34 billion acquisition of his former firm.

Whitehurst’s sudden departure was announced in a post by IBM CEO Arvind Krishna, which included a number of other executive changes and was released on a Friday before a long holiday weekend in the U.S. Krishna praised Whitehurst for his oversight in integrating Red Hat into IBM’s operations and also noted that Whitehurst would remain a senior advisor to the company.

IBM initially announced plans to acquire Red Hat in mid-2019, which was prior to Krishna ascending to the top role at IBM. Whitehurst was named IBM president at the same time that Krishna was named as the CEO-in-waiting to replace long-time company lead Ginni Rometty.

Analysts noted that the Krishna/Whitehurst leadership put IBM in a strong position to capitalize on its hybrid-cloud focus.

“While no individual is singularly responsible for the stock performance of a large organization, we nevertheless think a change can help in terms of leadership at the top,” BMO Capital Markets’ Keith Bachman noted in a research report on the IBM CEO move at that time. “In particular, we are very encouraged that Jim Whitehurst will be staying on at IBM as president, although we would have liked for Jim to get the top job.”

The change came on the heels of a strong first quarter for IBM, which included boastful forecasts from Krishna. However, IBM’s stock was trading down more than 4% on Friday, despite the broader Nasdaq trading up nearly 1%.

Outside of the Whitehurst bombshell, Krishna also announced that Bridget van Kralingen is relinquishing her role as SVP of global markets immediately, but would stay on for another year as SVP for special projects before retiring from the company. According to her LinkedIn profile, she has been at IBM for more than 17 years.

IBM Software, Cloud, and Data Platform SVP Rob Thomas has been tapped to replace Kralingen in the global markets role. Thomas has been at IBM for more than 22 years.

Thomas’ old position will be taken over by Tom Rosamilia, who is currently SVP for IBM Systems.

IBM plucked Ric Lewis from rival Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) to take on Rosamilia’s old position. Lewis spent more than 17 years at HPE, most recently as SVP and GM of its Software Defined & Cloud Group.