HPE Names Former PepsiCo CIO To Lead Next Stage of Digital Transformation

‘It’s great to see HPE bringing in some folks like Rom who has led a number of successful digital transformation initiatives with Fortune 500 companies,’ says CPP Associates Director of Professional Services Michael Maher. “It’s clear that he has a strong track record of moving big businesses forward through massive digital transformation initiatives.

Rom Kosla

Former PepsiCo Chief Information Officer Rom Kosla, a 29-year IT veteran, is taking over as Hewlett Packard Enterprise’s next CIO starting in July.

Kosla takes the top HPE IT job with the $29 billion edge-to-cloud computing powerhouse continuing its drive to modernize and transform its IT systems under HPE CEO Antonio Neri and HPE Chief Operating Officer John Schultz.

“Over the last several years, HPE has taken on massive transformations of its internal systems to position us for success,” said Schultz in a prepared statement. “I am confident that the breadth of Rom’s experience in the digital front-end and complex distribution and supply chain spaces, makes him the perfect person to build upon that work.”

[Related: CEO Antonio Neri: HPE Is Seeing A ‘Simply Amazing’ Uptick In AI Orders]

Kosla replaces former HPE CIO Rashmi Kumar, who stepped down after nearly five years in the role to become senior vice president and global CIO for healthcare technology provider Medtronic.

Kosla spent 14 years at PepsiCo, one of the largest food and beverage companies in the world with $86 billion in sales in 2022. Kosla started at PepsiCo in 2007 as a director of enterprise application development and moved steadily up the corporate ladder to become senior vice president and CIO of Enterprise Solutions in December 2019.

In this position, Kosla was responsible for all enterprise-wide applications, digital sales and mobile solutions platforms, as well as application security and enterprise-wide development and operations globally.

Kosla is coming to HPE from grocery retailer Ahold Delhaize USA, a $94.5 billion behemoth headquartered in the Netherlands. For the last two years, Kosla has overseen overseen IT systems for the grocery retailer as executive vice president, IT, and CIO.

Among the IT transformation initiatives undertaken by Kosla at Ahold Delhaize- which includes Stop & Shop, Food Lion and Hannaford- was a supply chain project that propelled growth, according to an interview with Kosla earlier this year from Winsight Grocery Business.

Kosla also helped drive ecommerce growth with an in-house platform called Prism. “We built the technology really on-premises within our data centers,” Kosla told Winsight Grocery. “The size and scale is just not possible in a traditional data center. So we migrated a significant portion into the cloud.”

Michael Maher, director of professional services at CPP Associates, Clinton, New Jersey, one of HPE’s top GreenLake partners, said Kosla’s proven track record implementing large scale IT transformations for Fortune 500 companies will benefit both HPE and its partners and customers.

“It’s great to see HPE bringing in some folks like Rom who has led a number of successful digital transformation initiatives with Fortune 500 companies,” said Maher. “It’s clear that he has a strong track record of moving big businesses forward through massive digital transformation initiatives. His unique perspective is going to help drive positive experiences for HPE and its partners and customers.”

Maher said he expects Kosla’s expertise to help drive forward the HPE GreenLake pay per use platform customer and partner experience.

“The power of the GreenLake hybrid cloud platform is it gives CIOs today the ability to leverage real time information to make good decisions about purchases, technology direction and integration points,” he said. “It provides CIOs with the real time data to truly understand their hybrid IT environments.”

The Kosla appointment continues the IT modernization effort that Neri initiated when he took the helm five years ago with a move to put HPE on a single ERP system. That massive IT project has paved the way for HPE last year to deliver its complete infrastructure product portfolio on the GreenLake edge to cloud platform.

HPE declined to make Kosla available for an interview prior to his July start date.

“I’m excited to join HPE at this pivotal moment for its business,” said Kosla in a prepared statement. “Continuous innovation in the IT estate is critical to the engagement of an organization’s stakeholders. HPE is committed to elevating the experience customers, partners, and team members have working and doing business with the company, and I’m looking forward to working with a superb team of professionals to do just that.”