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HPE slices and dices globo org chart

Waves off another exec in the name of progress

Hewlett Packard Enterprise is waving bye to another long standing exec as it puts more meat on the new structure that is part of a wider plan to make more money build a long term operational and financial blueprint.

A radical initiative branded HPE Next was hatched by CEO Meg Whitman in June, as we exclusively revealed. It is being run by senior veep of finance Jim Faust, reporting to president Antonio Neri, whom insiders view as HPE’s next top dog.

The heads of the EMEA and Americas regions, Andy Isherwood and Jim Merrit respectively, are set to leave HPE at the start of the company’s fiscal ’18 starting 1 November, meaning the managers that reported to them will now report to global sales chief Phil Davis.

In a memo sent to the sales force worldwide - see by us - Davis confirmed HPE will be divided into 11 single country or multi-country groups under one lead: the UK and Ireland; France; DACH (Germany, Austria and Switzerland); southern Europe; northern Europe; MEA and eastern Europe; North America; Latin America; Asia Pacific; Japan; and India.

This is supposed to speed up decision-making on investment and local priorities by removing a layer of regional execs. In a recent earning call for Q3 numbers, HPE said a small number of countries account for the “vast majority” of revenue and profit and will continue to do so for the next decade, so it wants to apportion resources accordingly.

The Global Industries, Strategic Alliances and Inside Sales (GISA), and the Business Development, Enablement, Solutions and Technology (BEST) functions at a global level will be “embedded into geographies,” revealed Davis.

He said customers would “benefit the most from these capabilities”. Neri also spoke with the sales folk this week to answer any questions they had.

The Channel and Alliances business units are to be merged under the control of Denzil Samuels, as “some of the traditional lines between our partner types continues to blur”.

Olivier Suinat, who previously ran GISA globally, “will be departing HPE in early FY18,” said Davis. “Over the next two months, he will help Denzil launch the integrated Channel and Alliances team and help the sales leadership with the transition to the new geography structure.”

Steve Lutz will continue to run the office of Strategy, Planning, and Operations. Kelly Ducourty, the former SVP of BEST, will join HPE Pointnext, reporting to Ana Pinczuk, the global lead for HPE’s advisory service.

In other confirmations, Lee Chew Tan, senior veep of global sales will run Hybrid IT sales and Marylou Maco will oversee sales for Pointnext.

Davis concurred “change is tough but I truly believe that all these moves will set HPE up for long-term success. I realise you are processing the implications as well as go-forward actions”.

Davis said HPE Next is supposed to make the company easier to work with - from a customer perspective - and urged staff to keep their mind on the job, “keep positive, do not be distracted by the chatter and continue to treat each other with respect”.

Some of the chatter may centre on the possibility of job cuts with insiders on the sales floor expecting a double digit percentage of employees to be chopped at the end of this financial year - some suggested it could be 20 per cent which would equate to a clear-out of thousands.

Whitman said when she first outlined HPE Next in June that the initiative was on a par with the product group splits at the company that has included the spin-off of HP Inc, the outsourcing division and the software business.

She also said ‘we’re going to right-size end-to-end cost structures of HPE to ensure we deliver on our financial architecture”.

In HPE’s last set of numbers for its Q3 period, revenue grew 3 per cent year-on-year to $7.5bn, with storage and networking on the up but server sales still sliding. Profit came in at $165m compared to $2.27bn, hit by separation and restructuring costs and pricing challenges. Ouch. ®

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