HPE CTO to step down

Nine months after Hewlett-Packard Enterprise (HPE) separated from HP’s PC and printer group and a month after it said it would spin off its enterprise services division, CEO Meg Whitman has announced more changes that will see the company’s CTO Martin Fink leave at the end of the year.

Fink has been the driving force behind The Machine, HPE’s project to design a new type of computer that uses memristors and silicon photonics to break down traditional tiers of memory and storage. However, HPE confirmed that the project is still moving ahead.

“Our plans to preview The Machine prototype by the end of this year remain on track,” the company said.

Spinning off the enterprise services business, which will merge with CSC to form a new company part-owned by HPE, provided “a unique opportunity for us to reimagine our internal organisation,” Whitman said in a blog post explaining the latest reorg.

Fink has been at HP more than 30 years and is also head of HP Labs. When he leaves, HP Labs will be merged into HPE’s enterprise group under current leader Antonio Neri.

The move will reduce the time it takes to get technologies from research into commercialisation, HPE said, but it may also raise questions about the breadth of research HP Labs will continue to pursue.

The company is also collapsing its sales teams into a single worldwide organisation, centralising product marketing, e-commerce, and “customer advocacy” under one executive and putting its IT and cybersecurity teams under its chief operating officer.

John Hinshaw, HPE’s Chief Customer Officer, will also leave at the end of the year.

“We’re living in a world where continuous improvement is essential to long-term success,” Whitman said.

She didn’t say if more layoffs would follow as a result of the changes.