30 Notable IT Executive Moves: January 2021

January starts off 2021 with CEO shakeups at Intel, VMware, Qualcomm, Centrify, Infinidat and Forcepoint, plus big executive moves at Microsoft, LogicMonitor, AMD, HP Inc., Unisys, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and many others.

New CEOs At Intel, Qualcomm, IBM’s ‘NewCo’ And More

After a year of major executive shakeups at IBM, AT&T and Nutanix, 2021 is following up with equally significant changes in top technology leadership positions at some of the IT industry’s leading companies.

Case in point: January saw not one, but two CEO switch-ups at two leading semiconductor companies: Intel and Qualcomm. But what was Intel’s gain was VMware’s loss with the virtualization giant’s longtime leader leaving to return to his employer of 30 years.

Other IT companies also named new CEOs last month, including Certify, Forcepoint, Infinidat, IBM’s “NewCo” planned spinoff and Incorta. There were also big personnel moves at Microsoft, LogicMonitor, AMD, HP Inc., Unisys, Hewlett Packard Enterprise, Samsung, Hootsuite and Sage.

What follows are 30 notable IT executive moves from January 2021.

Pat Gelsinger

VMware announced that CEO Pat Gelsinger is leaving the company after leading the virtualization giant for nearly nine years so that he can become chief executive of Intel.

Gelsinger is set to become CEO of Intel on Feb. 15 and will also join the chipmaker’s board of directors. He is taking over from Bob Swan, who led Intel for two years after serving as interim CEO and CFO. Zane Rowe, VMware’s CFO, will become interim CEO of VMware while the company’s board begins a search for Gelsinger’s permanent successor.

Gelsinger worked at Intel for much of his IT career. From 1979 to 2009, he held several top executive roles, including being named the company’s first chief technology officer in 2000, driving the creation of key industry technologies, including USB and Wi-Fi. Gelsinger left Intel in 2009 to join EMC as president and COO for three years before joining VMware in September 2012. He has been critical to VMware’s massive success over the past nine years.

Bob Swan

Intel announced that CEO Bob Swan is stepping down after leading the semiconductor giant for two years and will be replaced by VMware leader Pat Gelsinger.

Swan’s tenure as CEO is coming to an end only two years after he was appointed to lead the company in January 2019. He previously served as the company’s CFO and was appointed interim CEO in June 2019 after Intel’s board forced out the company’s previous leader, Brian Krzanich, for having been in a prior relationship with an employee.

Omar Ishrak, chairman of Intel’s board, thanked Swan for his leadership and credited the outgoing CEO for making “significant progress” in Intel’s transformation into a company that provides a variety of processor architectures and expanding its total addressable market. “Bob has also been instrumental in re-energizing the company’s culture to drive better execution of our product and innovation roadmap,” he said in a statement.

Cristiano Amon

Qualcomm appointed 26-year company veteran Cristiano Amon as its new CEO, taking over from the chipmaker’s leader of nearly seven years, Steve Mollenkopf, effective June 30.

The San Diego, Calif.-based company said Mollenkopf informed the board of directors of his plan to retire after working with the company for 26 years. He became CEO in 2014 and helped make Qualcomm into a leader for smartphone chips while also leading an expansion into the IoT, RF front end and automotive industry segments.

Amon is currently president of Qualcomm and has been in charge of the company’s semiconductor business, which includes mobile, RF front end, automotive and IoT. He has also overseen the company’s 5G strategy while leading the company’s M&A strategy. He joined Qualcomm in 1995 as an engineer and has held several business and technical leadership positions since then.

Art Gilliland

Centrify named former Symantec Enterprise leader Art Gilliland as its new CEO as the company changes ownership from Thoma Bravo to TPG.

The move comes just seven months after Centrify brought in top CollabNet executive Flint Brenton to serve as its president and CEO. Gilliland will take over once TPG closes its acquisition of Centrify from Thoma Bravo. Brenton had come in after Centrify’s previous CEO, Tim Steinkopf, stepped down for health reasons after taking over from co-founder Tom Kemp.

Gilliland comes to Centrify after leading Symantec through its tumultuous $10.7 billion sale to Broadcom. His second stint with Symantec began in November 2018, when Gilliland joined to oversee the enterprise division’s product and engineering teams and ended in November 2020 when he became at least the tenth high-ranking Symantec executive to depart since the Broadcom deal was announced.

Manny Rivelo

Former Arista Networks and F5 Networks executive Manny Rivelo was named CEO of Forcepoint, joining other new senior-level executives who joined the company following its sale from Raytheon to private equity firm Francisco Partners.

Rivelo will replace Matthew Moynahan, who had run Forcepoint since May 2016, shortly after the company was formed from the combination of Websense, Stonesoft, Sidewinder and Raytheon’s security business. Rivelo most recently served as networking vendor Arista’s chief customer officer from January 2018 to January 2020, which followed a two-year stint as CEO of data center services provider AppViewX. Prior to that, Rivelo spent four and a half years at F5 Networks, where he served as president and CEO of the 4,000-person application delivery vendor for the final six months of his tenure.

Joining Rivelo at Forcepoint will be F5 colleague John DiLullo, who will lead Forcepoint’s worldwide sales and business development teams as chief revenue officer. Also joining the Forcepoint executive team is Palo Alto Networks co-founder Dave Stevens, who will support Forcepoint’s global go-to-market strategy and expansion of commercial technology opportunities as senior vice president of strategy and execution.

Martin Schroeter

IBM named Martin Schroeter to be CEO of “NewCo,” the new company that will be created later this year when IBM spins off its managed infrastructure services business.

Schroeter was most recently senior vice president, global markets — a job he held starting in December 2017. There he was responsible for IBM’s global sales, client relationships and satisfaction, and worldwide geographic operations. He was also responsible for IBM marketing and communications functions and was responsible for building the company’s global brand and reputation.

In October, IBM surprised the industry when it unveiled a plan to split into two companies, spinning off its Global Technology Services (GTS) managed infrastructure services unit into a new publicly held company. IBM expects to complete the split by the end of 2021—a move that will likely reorder the top ranks of the CRN Solution Provider 500.

Phil Bullinger

Infinidat, a provider of enterprise-class storage solutions, appointed former Western Digital executive Phil Bullinger as its new CEO, taking over from co-CEOs Kariel Sandler and Nir Simon, who took over from founding CEO Moshe Yanai when he stepped down last year.

Bullinger was most recently senior vice president and general manager of Western Digital’s Data Center business unit. Prior to that he was head of the Isilon business at Dell EMC and, before that, senior vice president of storage at Oracle.

The company also announced the appointment of Alon Rozenshein as CFO. He was previously CFO and COO of Clarizen, a provider of collaborative work management solutions.

Scott Jones

Incorta, a provider of next-generation enterprise data and analytics software, appointed former Alteryx executive Scott Jones as its new CEO, taking over from co-founder Osama Elkady, who will remain CTO to lead product strategy and innovation.

Jones was most recently president and chief revenue officer for Alteryx. Prior to that, he was senior vice president of Americas sales at Tableau Software. Prior to that, he spent five years in various leadership roles at SAP, including COO of its database and technology division.

“Given his experience building and scaling high-growth teams, Scott has the background, energy and vision to drive the future growth of Incorta,” Elkady said in a statement. “I am confident Scott will provide the leadership, insights and strategic direction for Incorta to achieve new heights, and I look forward to supporting his work as he leads Incorta in bringing next-generation enterprise data and analytics to the entire market.”

Christina Kosmowski

LogicMonitor, the SaaS-based IT infrastructure monitoring platform company, brought on Slack executive Christina Kosmowski as its first president.

Kosmowski joined LogicMonitor after a four-year tenure at business collaborations and communications player Slack, where she most recently served as vice president, global head of customer success and services. Before that she spent 15 years at Salesforce (which is in the process of acquiring Slack).

In her new role with the SaaS provider, Kosmowski will report to Kevin McGibben, CEO of LogicMonitor, as the company continues to scale quickly thanks to booming demand for visibility into hybrid IT infrastructure, according to the company. She has been tasked with leading LogicMonitor’s go-to-market strategy, research and development, and customer success practices.

Darren Grasby

AMD promoted several senior leaders in January, including Darren Grasby to executive vice president and chief sales officer and Devinder Kumar to executive vice president and chief financial officer.

The company also promoted Martin Ashton to senior vice president of graphics architecture and Radeon Technologies Group, Mark Fuselier to senior vice president of technology and product engineering, and Sam Naffziger to senior vice president, corporate fellow and product technology architect.

“Our high-performance products and long-term roadmaps have placed AMD on a significant growth trajectory,” said Lisa Su, AMD’s president and CEO, in a statement. “Aligning and expanding our senior leadership team around our highest-priority growth opportunities will continue the momentum we have built across our business in 2021 and beyond.”

Tolga Kurtoglu

HP Inc. announced several changes in its executive ranks that included the appointment of a new CTO, Tolga Kurtoglu, who had most recently worked for the company’s printer industry rival Xerox. Kurtoglu will also hold the position of global head of HP Labs.

Palo Alto, Calif.-based HP also disclosed the departure of Kim Rivera, HP’s president of strategy and business management and chief legal officer, along with the hiring of a new chief strategy and incubation officer, Sarabjit Singh Baveja. The company said that its general counsel, Harvey Anderson, has been promoted to serve as chief legal officer and corporate secretary

Kurtoglu’s career included a decade spent in executive roles at Xerox’s Palo Alto Research Center (PARC). Most recently, he served as CEO of PARC from January 2017 until November 2020, according to his LinkedIn profile. Kurtoglu also held the title of senior vice president and head of global research at Xerox from January through November of 2020.

Sunil Shenoy

Intel veteran engineer Sunil Shenoy is rejoining the chipmaker after incoming CEO Pat Gelsinger promised that he would bring back “key leaders” to help him stage a comeback at the company.

Shenoy, a 33-year company veteran who left Intel in 2014, will serve as senior vice president and general manager of Intel’s Design Engineering Group, the Santa Clara, Calif.-based company announced Wednesday. His responsibilities will include “design, development, validation and manufacturing of intellectual properties and system-on-chips for client and data center applications,” Intel said.

Shenoy, who was most recently an executive at RISC-V-based semiconductor company SiFive, will start on Feb. 1 and report to current Intel CEO Bob Swan until Gelsinger takes over in mid-February. He is joining the company shortly after another Intel veteran engineer, Glenn Hinton, announced he would be returning to the company to work on a “high-performance CPU project.” Hinton said last week that Gelsinger’s return to Intel after an 11-year absence helped seal the deal.

Kurt DelBene

Microsoft’s head of corporate strategy, Kurt DelBene, is leaving the company in June, ZDNet reported.

DelBene’s full title was vice president and head of corporate strategy and core services engineering, a role he held since 2015 when he returned to the company. He is spending his final months with the company leading Microsoft’s COVID-19 response work.

DelBene’s role is being split among multiple executives, according to ZDNet. Core services engineering, digital security and risk engineering will move into the cloud and AI organization under Scott Guthrie; Microsoft business operations will move into CFO Amy Hood’s purview; and corporate strategy will be overseen by Chris Young, Microsoft’s new business development chief.

Vishal Gupta

Unisys announced that Vishal Gupta, the company’s CTO and senior vice president of solution innovation and architecture, had left the company. Lexmark announced in February that Gupta was joining as senior vice president and chief information and technology officer.

Gupta had been at Unisys for more than two years. Prior to that, he was global senior vice president of engineering and product management at Symantec, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Previously, Gupta was chief products and IoT officer at Silent Circle. Before that, he was at Cisco Systems for eight years, most recently serving as vice president and general manager for the company’s “Internet of Everything” division. In that role he was in charge of global solutions and services for the health care, finance, retail and campus verticals.

Ajay Singh

Just weeks after its cloud visionary Rajiv Ramaswami left for rival Nutanix, VMware lost another cloud leader in Ajay Singh, who departed in January to become chief product officer for Pure Storage.

Singh was senior vice president and general manager of VMware’s Cloud Management business unit, which includes vRealize and vCloud product suites, for the past six years. He helped scale VMware’s worldwide Cloud Management business from $1 billion to more than $2.1 billion over his tenure, according to his LinkedIn profile.

“I have had long-standing admiration for Pure and I could not be more eager to be a part of this world-class team,” said Singh in a statement. “Pure is rightfully a disruptor and an innovator, meeting customers where they are and enabling them on a path forward to transform their environments.”

Terry Richardson

Terry Richardson, an 11-year Hewlett Packard Enterprise channel stalwart, retired as vice president and general manager of the company’s U.S. East Enterprise business, effective Jan. 31.

Richardson was replaced by Joe Ayers, who was the vice president and general manager of the federal enterprise group at HPE. Ayers — a West Point graduate and former U.S. Army officer and aviator — joined HPE in 2013 after 13 years at HPE rival Dell Technologies.

Richardson started his career at Hewlett Packard Co. —before the company split in two —as the director of the HP server OEM business. After only six months he moved to vice president of U.S. Storage Channel and Emerging Growth Storage Accounts. In November 2012, Richardson became vice president of channel sales and worked steadily with partners driving sales growth, culminating in his appointment as vice president, North America, Channel and Alliances.

Anwar Awad

Intel engineering executive Anwar Awad departed the company to become the president of a company called Akrostar, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Awad was most recently part of Intel’s IP Engineering Group, a new team that was formed as part of a restructuring following the departure of chip design legend Jim Keller, according to a memo obtained by Wccftech. On LinkedIn, his most recent position was listed as general manager and vice president of Intel’s Design Engineering Group.

Prior to joining Intel in 2015, Awad worked at Synopsis for more than 21 years, having served most recently as vice president of R&D, mixed signal IP and digital IP.

Tyler Bryson

Tyler Bryson, a Microsoft veteran of more than 18 years, has been picked to lead the Redmond, Wash.-based technology giant’s U.S. partner efforts.

Bryson, who was named corporate vice president of Microsoft’s U.S. partner group, previously served as vice president of Microsoft’s small, medium and corporate business segments in the United States, a position in which he said he worked closely with his predecessor, David Willis, who had led Microsoft’s U.S. commercial partner business since mid-2017. A CRN Channel Chiefs honoree for the past two years, Willis left Microsoft this month after nearly 30 years in channel-related roles, saying he wanted to spend more time with his family and pursue personal interests.

His past Microsoft positions have included vice president of Latin America sales, marketing and service group, general manager of marketing and operations for Microsoft India and general manager of the southwest district enterprise and partners group. Bryson also served as Microsoft’s manufacturing sector general manager, director of its U.S. high-tech industry sales and manager of enterprise solutions, according to his LinkedIn page.

John Curtis

Samsung Electronics America named John Curtis as its new mobility channel chief as the firm continues expanding its portfolio of business-focused devices and pursuing B2B sales growth in the U.S.

Curtis, a five-year company veteran who was most recently vice president of sales at Samsung Electronics America, is taking on a role vacated by Mike Coleman, formerly the mobility channel chief and vice president at Samsung Electronics America. Coleman departed Samsung in December to become North American channel chief at unified communications giant Avaya.

Prior to joining Samsung in 2016, Curtis spent 16 years at telecommunications firm Vodafone, according to his LinkedIn profile. He rose through the company’s executive ranks to ultimately become vice president of operations at Vodafone Global Enterprise before moving to Samsung.

Melissa Murray Bailey

Hootsuite appointed LinkedIn veteran Melissa Murray Bailey as senior vice president of global sales.

Bailey was most recently head of sales for North America Talent Brand and Hiring Solutions at LinkedIn. Prior to that, she had led organizations across different regions for Universum Global, The Corporate Executive Board and Accenture.

“Melissa is a thoughtful, clear, and engaging leader who approaches her work with a growth mindset and focus; she is perfectly poised to lead our global sales teams and strategy as we move into a period of accelerated growth,” said Tom Keiser, CEO of Hootsuite, in a statement. “In addition to an impressive professional background, Melissa shares Hootsuite’s enthusiasm around purpose and value evidenced through her active support of community organizations that help children reach their full potential.”

Aziz Benmalek

Sage, a developer of business management and accounting applications for small and mid-size businesses, has named former Splunk and Microsoft channel executive Aziz Benmalek as vice president of the company’s partner organization.

Benmalek joins Sage from Splunk where he was the big data software company’s channel chief for about two years, serving as vice president, worldwide indirect sales, partners and business development. Before Splunk, Benmalek worked in various posts at Microsoft for more than 22 years, including general manager of hosting and cloud services and, at the time he left, vice president of worldwide cloud and managed service providers.

“Customers are looking to our partners for cloud solutions that make it easy for them to do business,” Lee Perkins, Sage chief operating officer, said in a statement. “Aziz joins us with deep knowledge and experience in channel-first cloud computing and a passion for customer success. Through his leadership, Sage is positioned to support our partners’ success – and that of our mutual customers – better than ever before.”

Guido Appenzeller

Former VMware executive Guido Appenzeller announced that he is joining Intel as CTO of the company’s Data Platforms Group, whose portfolio includes Xeon CPUs, Optane memory and FPGAs.

Appenzeller previously worked for Gelsinger at VMware as CTO of cloud and networking from 2014 to 2019. He was most recently chief product officer at Yubico, a company that provides a hardware authentication device known as the YubiKey. Before his time at VMware, Appenzeller was CEO and co-founder of Big Switch Networks, a software-defined networking vendor that was acquired by data center and large campus networking specialist Arista Networks last year.

“Intel has a long and storied history. However, as it has been widely publicized, it today faces a range of challenges,” Appenzeller said in his LinkedIn post. “At the same time, Intel still has enormous strength in their data center CPUs, massive scale, a deep and diverse portfolio and a great team at the DPG. In the end, my decision was based on the belief that the opportunities outweigh the challenges. And judging by the recent move by Pat Gelsinger, I am not the only one with that view.”

Giusy Buonfantino

Giusy Buonfantino, a former Amway and Kimberly-Clark executive, is taking over Google Cloud’s consumer packaged goods segment as part of the No. 3 cloud provider’s focus on providing industry-specific solutions for enterprise customers.

Buonfantino, a 30-year veteran of the CPG industry, has been named senior vice president of CPG, a newly created role. She will lead Google Cloud’s CPG go-to-market solutions team and help develop the company’s roadmap and strategy for the industry, which includes the likes of the Coca-Cola Co., Procter & Gamble and Unilever.

Buonfantino previously served for a year as chief digital and marketing officer at direct-selling giant Amway, the Ada, Mich.-based company that sells nutrition, beauty, personal care and home products through agents under a multi-level marketing business model. Prior to that, Buonfantino worked for eight-plus years at Kimberly-Clark, whose personal care brands include Cottonelle, Depend, Huggies and Kleenex, most recently as chief marketing officer. She spent 18 years in global marketing and general management roles at Johnson & Johnson in the United States and Europe.

Vipin Mittal

Cleo, a provider of ecosystem integration software, appointed former IBM sales leader Vipin Mittal as vice president of channel sales.

Most recently, Mittal was director of solutions engineering at CoEnterprise, where he worked for more than three years. Before that, he was a business solutions sales leader at IBM for over three years.

“We are thrilled to have a leader of Vipin’s caliber join the Cleo team,” Ken Lyons, chief revenue officer of Cleo, said in a statement. “With his rich integration industry knowledge and hands-on experience both enabling partner ecosystems and being a partner himself, he’s delivered value on both sides of these important relationships and has the unique leadership skills required to make Cleo, our valuable partners, and our joint customers extremely successful.”

Steve Benvenuto

Longtime Cisco Systems channel leader Steve Benvenuto joined wireless edge networking specialist Cradlepoint as vice president of partner sales for the Americas.

Benvenuto’s focus at Cradlepoint will be on empowering solution providers with next-generation connectivity options such as LTE and 5G for mobile, branch and emerging IoT use cases, the executive said in his LinkedIn post on his new appointment. Swedish telecom equipment giant Ericsson in November acquired Cradlepoint for $1.1 billion.

The longtime Cisco channel leader in October took Cisco up on the early retirement packages the tech giant was doling out to some of its executives, ending his 21-year tenure with the company. Benvenuto most recently served as senior director, global security partner sales for Cisco for the past four years. Prior to that, he served as senior director, sales and business development of Cisco‘s Cloud Partner Transformation unit for six years.

Ted Julian

Devo Technology, a provider of cloud-native logging and security analytics software, appointed serial entrepreneur Ted Julian as its senior vice president of product.

Julian was most recently co-founder of Resilient Systems, a provider of security orchestration, automation and response software, which was acquired by IBM Security in 2016. He also co-founded and was an executive at Arbor Networks, which was acquired by Danaher, and at Stake, which was acquired by Symantec.

“Devo experienced 90 percent revenue growth in 2020 and has quickly become a major disruptor in the marketplace. Ted’s strength driving disruptive technologies makes him the ideal addition to the Devo team,” said Marc van Zadelhoff, CEO of Devo, in a statement. “Constant innovation and high-performance execution [are] powering our growth trajectory, and Ted’s proven expertise will accelerate this pace. This is my second opportunity to work with Ted at a hyper-growth security company and I couldn’t be happier he’s joined us.”

Chase Cunningham

Ericom Software, a provider of cloud cybersecurity solutions, appointed former Forrester Research analyst Chase Cunningham as chief strategy officer.

At Forrester Research Cunningham covered zero trust-related solutions and spearheaded the Forrester Zero Trust certification program. Prior to that he was director of cyber threat intelligence at Armor. He is a retired U.S. Navy Chief Cryptologic Technician.

“Chase‘s Zero Trust vision and drive have had a major impact on the global cybersecurity market, and his passion, real-world expertise, and candor are valued and appreciated by industry executives and as well as government leaders,” said David Canellos, CEO of Ericom, in a statement. “We believe that his insights and hands-on security expertise will enable the digital transformation that is crucial to our customers’ secure growth and success.”

Juan Gonzalez

Carousel Industries named Juan Gonzalez as its senior vice president of customer success, a newly created role to expand the company’s relationships with clients.

Gonzalez was most recently vice president of customer success for CRMNEXT, a customer engagement software vendor. Prior to that he had the same title at Ipswitch, a provider of network and data security solutions. He also previously worked at CRM provider Bullhorn.

“The SVP of customer success role is a natural continuation of our continuous improvement culture, and just part of customer success-obsessed mission to really unify our experience for our clients,” Gonzalez told CRNtv. “But the role is new in that it combines all aspects of our [client] relationship from when they first hear about the way we can impact their business to the way in which they plan the redefinition and reinvention of their own businesses throughout the client lifecycle.”

Ken Denman

VMware announced that it is adding seasoned technology entrepreneur and venture capitalist Ken Denman to its board of directors.

Denman is a venture partner at Sway Ventures but was previously co-founder and CEO of Emotient, an artificial intelligence startup that analyzes facial expressions and was acquired by Apple in 2016. He was also CEO of software communications specialist Openwaves Systems, as well as at cloud-based service manager and Wi-Fi company iPass, for which he led a successful IPO in 2003.

“Ken is an experienced technologist and corporate director with deep roots in software, mobile and AI technologies,” said Paul Sagan, who is the lead independent VMware board member and chair of the compensation and corporate governance committee, in a statement.

Paul Jacobs

EdgeQ, a 5G modem chip startup, announced that former Qualcomm CEO and Executive Chairman Paul Jacobs and former Qualcomm CTO Matt Grob have joined the company’s advisory board.

Jacobs was CEO of Qualcomm from 2005 to 2014 and executive chairman of the company from 2009 to 2018. Grob was executive vice president and CTO at Qualcomm, where he worked for nearly 27 years. The two now run XCOM Labs, an advanced networking research firm.

“EdgeQ’s solution, based on the open design of RISC-V processors, enables innovation deeper in the wireless technology stack,” Jacobs said in a statement. “This will allow both general performance improvements as well as the design of wireless systems that are tailored to specific use cases. I look forward to working with new entrants and pioneers, such as EdgeQ, to capitalize on wireless innovations and market forces that will bring to life the expected benefits of 5G and beyond.”