History 2003: Elias, Sorenson and Archibald Depart HP

We have interviewed Howard Elias on 2 occasions.

The first time, when he was VP & GM of the storage products division at Compaq, everything went fairly well.

On the second outing, however, in his new role as VP and GM of HP’s network storage solutions, he “lost it“, to put it bluntly.

Shortly after, he was named HP’s SVP of business operations and management for the enterprise systems group. After 9 years at Compaq, then HP post merger, he has bade farewell in order “to pursue personal interests” and apparently will not be replaced.”

Could he pop up, like Mark Lewis and now Mark Sorenson before him, at EMC, currently seeking a CTO?

It doesn’t seem too likely, given that Elias and Lewis haven’t always seen eye to eye.

It’s a good deal for EMC, in any case, which adds Mark Sorenson to its roster of all-stars, previously VP of HP’s storage software division, now named to the newly created EMC position of SVP, information access and recovery software, reporting to AVP of open software ops Mark Lewis.

The latter left HP for EMC a year ago, following the Compaq merger and Elias’ promotion above him.

Meanwhile back at the HP ranch, Sorenson has been replaced by Frank Harbist, who was VP of HP’s nearline storage unit and will report to VP of network storage solutions Bob Schultz.

The third defection from HP is Roger Archibald, who is replaced as VP of NAS products by Harry Baeversad.

This executive slight coincides with the announcement of quarterly losses of $70 million for the company’s enterprise group, which includes storage, compared to $7 million for the preceding 3-month period.

We conclude with the arrival at EMC of John Koury, Compaq’s former VP of WW marketing for the entreprise storage group, who just joined the Hopkinton, MA company as VP of channel marketing. He reports to EVP of marketing David Goulden.

This article is an abstract of news published on issue 188 on September 2003 from the former paper version of Computer Data Storage Newsletter.