Tom Georgens CEO of NetApp

NetApp, Inc. announced that its Board of Directors appointed Tom Georgens as the company’s president and chief executive officer, succeeding Dan Warmenhoven, who led the company as CEO for the past 15 years. The transition in leadership, which is effective immediately, is the result of a management succession process.

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Georgens, 49, has been president and chief operating officer and a member of the Board of Directors since February 2008. He joined NetApp in October 2005 as executive vice president and general manager of Enterprise Storage Systems and was named executive vice president of Product Operations in January 2007.

Warmenhoven, 58, continues as chairman of the Board of Directors. He also assumes the role of executive chairman, a newly created position to help build and expand relationships with certain strategic partners around the world, including service providers and key technology partners.

"Looking back, I am very proud that NetApp has achieved a leadership position in the storage market and now look forward to supporting Tom as he takes the company through the next stages of growth in a new era for the information technology (IT) industry," said Warmenhoven. "Tom has demonstrated proven leadership capabilities in strategy development and day-to-day operations."

"I am honored to follow in Dan’s footsteps," said Georgens. "In just 15 years, NetApp has grown from a $14 million startup with 45 employees into a recognized market leader in networked storage and data management with $3.4 billion in annual revenues and approximately 8,000 employees around the world. Dan also helped to cultivate a unique corporate culture, which has resulted in NetApp consistently being recognized as a great place to work."

Georgens added: "I am excited about leading NetApp forward at a time when the IT industry is at a critical inflection point that will create tremendous opportunities and inevitable challenges. We are committed to creating success for our customers and partners in this changing market environment."

Comments

We met both Tom Georgens and Dan Warmenhoven in the past. Georgens could be an excellent CEO for NetApp as he knows quite well the storage technology and has been at the head of Engenio, a subsidiary of LSI for storage subsystems, during several years. But he didn't succeed in his efforts for an IPO. That's probably the biggest failure in his career.

We are convinced that he was recruited by NetApp in 2005 to succeed Warmenhoven. Following the lost war against EMC to acquire Data Domain, we expected to see a new CEO for the company even if Warmenhoven, only 58, wanted to keep his place a longer time. Georgens was in the best position to succeed.

Before LSI, he spent spent 11 years at EMC in a variety of engineering and marketing positions.

In 2008 Georgens got $2,9 million in total compensation including $511,154 in salary.

Abstracts of the fiscal 1Q10 earnings call transcript:

Dan Warmenhoven, COB and executive chairman

"I would like to invite everyone on the call to join me in congratulating Thomas Georgens for being appointed CEO of NetApp. Over the past four years Tom has demonstrated tremendous leadership, strategic thinking and operational ability especially during the challenging environment this past year. He has earned the respect of our employees, our customers, our shareholders and the board of directors and I am confident Tom is the right person to lead NetApp into the future.

"My 15 year tenure as NetApp’s CEO has been an incredibly rewarding journey but nothing lasts forever. I have had a long time personal goal to transition out of the CEO role by the time I turned 60 which is only about five quarters from now. This felt like an appropriate time to make the transition. The economy appears to have stabilized and it feels like we are sailing on somewhat calmer seas. It is always better to implement a transition during a time of relative tranquility. NetApp is also on the cusp of a new era, an era characterized by cloud computing and infrastructure service providers which will change the nature of our business. Plus the change in the character of our products as we start shipping the scale out technology and Ontap Release 8 in a few weeks.

"It seems wise to make the CEO change at the beginning of an era rather than in the middle to maximize continuity and minimize disruption and Tom is absolutely the right person to succeed me. He is ready to step into the CEO role to lead NetApp in this new era. Tom has demonstrated outstanding strategic leadership regarding the best way for NetApp to capitalize on the cloud opportunity."