HPE Boosts Momentum with Organizational Improvements

BY: Meg Whitman

 

This is an exciting time for Hewlett Packard Enterprise. During the past few years, we have reignited our innovation engine, rebuilt relationships with customers and partners, and gotten our cost structure in line with our revenue. Best of all, we are now winning in the marketplace, and that feels really good!

Last month, we made a major move to accelerate our business when we announced the spin off and merger our Enterprise Services business with CSC. In addition to making HPE more competitive - with faster growth, higher margins and stronger free cash flow - the move also provided a unique opportunity for us to reimagine our internal organization.

After we complete the spin of our Enterprise Services business in March 2017, our goal is to create a standalone company that is more efficient, agile and innovative right out of the gate. To that end, we are implementing some organizational changes to make HPE even stronger and more successful.

 

Innovation

Martin Fink, our chief technology officer and head of Hewlett Packard Labs, will be retiring from HPE at the end of the year, after more than 30 years with the company. He is a visionary technologist and has been critical to reigniting the innovation engine at HPE.

Martin has had a remarkable career, driving some of our most important initiatives, including our Cloud, open source and Linux strategies and leading the Business Critical Systems division and The Machine. Martin will leave a lasting impression on the company, and I know he will be missed.

Of course, the work done at Hewlett Packard Labs is what fuels much of the engineering innovation at HPE. To further accelerate the time it takes to drive technology from research and development to commercialization, we will move Hewlett Packard Labs into the Enterprise Group under Antonio Neri.

This move will also help align our R&D work on The Machine with the business - particularly how we integrate key components like photonics and memristor into existing product lines - by bringing together our innovation roadmap with our business roadmap.

Our plans to preview The Machine prototype by the end of this year remain on track. The Machine has been a passion of Martin's for nearly 10 years. The prototype will bring The Machine to life and serve as the capstone of Martin's leadership.

 

Go to Market

As a company, we've made great progress improving our relationships and engagement with customers and partners. But, a stronger, more focused HPE means always thinking of our customers first and organizing ourselves to meet their ever-evolving needs.

To that end, we are taking steps to centralize and simplify our organization. These changes will make us easier to buy from and partner with.

To drive better sales execution while optimally serving our global customers, we are aligning our sales teams into a single global sales organization within our Enterprise Group. That group will be led by Peter Ryan, currently Senior Vice President and Managing Director of the Enterprise Group's EMEA region, and will also include regional and indirect sales.

In addition, we will be centralizing our Product Marketing, E-commerce and Customer Advocacy groups into a single marketing organization under the leadership of Henry Gomez, our Chief Marketing and Communications Officer. By bringing these organizations together under Henry, we will simplify our processes, streamline our focus and create better career opportunities for our employees.

Finally, our IT and Cyber Security teams will move over to Chris Hsu, our Chief Operating Officer. By having these teams work more closely with Chris, we will further leverage their capabilities across the company to drive process improvement, enhance customer and partner experience and employee engagement.

John Hinshaw, currently our chief customer officer, will be leaving HPE at the end of the year. I hired John to run Technology and Operations, where he dramatically strengthened our IT infrastructure and delivery capabilities.

When the company separated in 2016, he took on the important role of Chief Customer Officer, focusing on some of our largest accounts and strategic alliances as well as IT, Cyber Security and Customer Advocacy. I will miss him, and I am grateful that he has decided to stay engaged with our customers until his departure.

We're living in a world where continuous improvement is essential to long-term success.

I'm excited about the future of HPE, and I'm confident that these changes will help us accelerate our strategy and continue to win in the marketplace.