HPE shuffles its cloud group as it reportedly considers going private.

Mitch Wagner, Executive Editor, Light Reading

August 2, 2016

2 Min Read
HPE Reorganizes Cloud Business as Boss Exits

HPE is reorganizing its cloud business unit as Bill Hilf, SVP and GM HPE Cloud, leaves the company.

As part of its hybrid cloud focus, Hewlett Packard Enterprise is moving its Helion OpenStack and Helion CloudSystem teams to its Enterprise Group, part of the new Software-Defined & Cloud Group, headed by Ric Lewis. The group will be responsible for both traditional and cloud infrastructures, with Mark Interrante leading the cloud team, according to a post on the HPE blog Monday. As part of that transition, HIlf is leaving HPE.

Interrante's LinkedIn profile shows him as SVP engineering at HP (time to update that profile with the new company name -- it's "HPE" now, fella!), 2010 to present, previously at Rackspace and Yahoo Inc. (Nasdaq: YHOO).

Hilf's LinkedIn profile shows him as SVP & GM, HPE Cloud for two years, joining HP in 2013 from Microsoft Corp. (Nasdaq: MSFT) Azure. He was at Microsoft 2004 through 2013 and at IBM Corp. (NYSE: IBM) before that.

HPE is also making sales changes. It realigned its sales team into a single organization June 27, led by Peter Ryan. HPE followed up on Monday, naming Jim Merritt, who led Asia Pacific & Japan sales, to head up North American sales. The current managing director of American sales, Robert Vrij, will join Hilf going out the door at the end of the year. Phil Davis, now head of storage sales in APK, will now head up APJ sales.

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Finally, HPE said Bill Philbin will head up the storage business, a job previously held by Manish Goel, who's also leaving the company.

The changes follow a Reuters report last week that private equity firms are focused on software assets that HPE has been considering divesting, worth $6 billion to $8 billion.

Earlier, The Information reported that several private equity firms, including KKR, Apollo Global Management and Carlyle Group, "are sniffing around" HP, considering a buyout valued at $40 billion or more, which would allow HPE to "streamline outside the glare of public scrutiny." HPE declined to comment. "As a matter of policy, HPE does not comment on rumors and speculation," a spokesperson said.

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— Mitch Wagner, Follow me on TwitterVisit my LinkedIn profile, Editor, Light Reading Enterprise Cloud

About the Author(s)

Mitch Wagner

Executive Editor, Light Reading

San Diego-based Mitch Wagner is many things. As well as being "our guy" on the West Coast (of the US, not Scotland, or anywhere else with indifferent meteorological conditions), he's a husband (to his wife), dissatisfied Democrat, American (so he could be President some day), nonobservant Jew, and science fiction fan. Not necessarily in that order.

He's also one half of a special duo, along with Minnie, who is the co-habitor of the West Coast Bureau and Light Reading's primary chewer of sticks, though she is not the only one on the team who regularly munches on bark.

Wagner, whose previous positions include Editor-in-Chief at Internet Evolution and Executive Editor at InformationWeek, will be responsible for tracking and reporting on developments in Silicon Valley and other US West Coast hotspots of communications technology innovation.

Beats: Software-defined networking (SDN), network functions virtualization (NFV), IP networking, and colored foods (such as 'green rice').

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