CEO Tom Georgens to Leave NetApp

NetApp, Inc. announced changes to the executive leadership team and board of directors, effective immediately.

George Kurian has been appointed by the board as CEO and also appointed to the board of directors.

Lead independent director Mike Nevens has been elected COB.

These announcements follow the departure of Tom Georgens, the company’s former chairman and CEO.

“NetApp is an exceptional company with a great future and the board believes that it is the right time for new leadership to maximize its potential,” said Nevens. “These changes are aimed at speeding the company’s movement to its next phase of innovation and growth. While we intend to conduct a CEO search, we have the utmost confidence in George’s ability to lead the company, given his deep knowledge of NetApp and support from a strong executive team. George has deep relationships with customers and partners globally and is committed to strengthening those relationships going forward.”

Nevens continued: “On behalf of the board and everyone at NetApp, I sincerely thank Tom for his many valuable contributions over the past 10 years.”

George Kurian joined NetApp in 2011 and has served as the company’s EVP, product operations, where he was responsible for overseeing the strategy and development of NetApp’s product and solutions portfolio since September 2013.

Prior to this role, Kurian was SVP of the Data ONTAP group at NetApp since December 2011. In this role, he oversaw the product roadmap and engineering execution of the Data ONTAP OS and the associated On Command Storage Management product portfolio. He was previously SVP of the storage solutions group at NetApp where he oversaw the solutions portfolio and joint partner technology integration roadmaps. He joined NetApp in April 2011.

Prior to that, he was VP and GM of the application networking and switching technology group at Cisco Systems. In this role, he was responsible for Cisco products for the modular campus LAN switching and WAN application delivery markets. He also led Cisco’s development of products and solutions to enable Ethernet-based converged networks for video, voice and ddata.

Prior to Cisco, he was the VP for product management and strategy at Akamai Technologies, a management consultant with McKinsey and Company and led software engineering and product management teams at Oracle Corporation.

Kurian holds a Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering degree from Princeton University and a Master of Business Administration degree from Stanford University.

“I am honored to lead NetApp during this time of transition,” said Kurian. “I look forward to engaging with the entire NetApp community as we execute our strategic plan and key investment areas of accelerating clustered Data ONTAP adoption, regaining traction in the channel, and increasing our sales capacity. We are committed to delivering improved growth and financial performance and remain confident in the strength of our technology and hybrid cloud strategy.”