HPE Picks Company Veteran As New Pointnext Leader

Hewlett Packard Enterprise on Tuesday said it has appointed company veteran Pradeep Kumar as the new head of its HPE Pointnext team.

Kumar's promotion to the new role, which is effective Sept. 1, comes less than a month since Phil Davis was appointed chief sales officer and president of hybrid IT at the same time that Ana Pinczuk left HPE Pointnext for "new opportunities."

Pinczuk, who at the time of her departure was president and general manager of HPE Pointnext, led Pointnext since joining HPE early last year, and was credited with making Pointnext a more customer-focused and outcome-led business. She was at HPE for under a year.

[Related: Vertical Focus: HPE's Pointnext Has Partners Primed For A Big-Time Services Play]

HP said that Kumar's title will be senior vice president and general manager for HPE Pointnext.

Pointnext was launched early last year at about the time HPE spun off its $20-billion enterprise service in a merger with CSC to form DXC Technology.

Pointnext is HPE's technology services organization focused on accelerating digital transformation around hybrid IT and intelligent edge computing.

Davis unveiled the promotion of Kumar in a blog post on Tuesday.

Kumar worked with HPE for over 20 years across several business and regions, and was most recently the leader of the HPE Pointnext global support delivery team and an important part in using Pointnext to turn HPE into a services-led company, Davis wrote in the blog post.

"I couldn’t think of a better person to lead HPE Pointnext into its next chapter. I look forward to working closely with Pradeep as we continue to build on the positive momentum of HPE Pointnext and accelerate our Hybrid IT business," he wrote.

HPE Pointnext has turned out to be a unique way to deliver digital transformation services to customers, said Chris Case, president of Sequel Data Systems, an Austin, Texas-based solution provider who has worked with HPE's GreenLake hybrid cloud services for the past three years.

GreenLake capabilities are designed, delivered, and operated by HPE Pointnext.

"The biggest difference is it allows customers to consume IT on-premises as if it was on a public cloud, but still keep it on-premises," Case told CRN. "Certain customers have specific concerns, such as requirements that data be kept in specific regions. And customers want the cloud, but not necessarily be in a public cloud. HPE was one of the first to offer this choice."

Case said that he has not yet met Kumar, but looks forward to working with him. "We provide a lot of feedback on GreenLake, and HPE has been very receptive to us," he said. "Hopefully that will continue."