HP's WebOS Team Shrinks Further As Chief Architect Departs

Brian Hernacki, Hewlett-Packard's chief architect for WebOS and a 16-year IT industry veteran, has become the latest high ranking member of HP's WebOS business unit to leave the company.

It's not clear if Hernacki's departure, first reported on Monday by The Verge, was voluntary or the result of a restructuring in the WebOS business unit. HP didn't respond to a request for comment.

Hernacki's background includes more than a decade in the security industry. He spent nearly seven years at Symantec as a researcher/architect, joining the company in 2002 in its $135 million acquisition of security startup Recourse Technologies, where he was chief scientist, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Hernacki joined Palm in 2009 as chief security architect and moved into the chief WebOS architect role last January, according to his LinkedIn profile.

Hernacki has 33 patents to his name, including 8 for which he's listed as the sole inventor, covering functions such as network traffic identification by waveform analysis; efficient assembly of fragmented network traffic for data security; and correlating network DNS data to filter content, according to his LinkedIn profile.

HP, which last week said it plans to launch Open WebOS in September, has seen a number of high profile WebOS staffers leave in recent months, including Jon Rubinstein, former Palm CEO and one-time head of HP's mobile devices unit, who resigned last week.

Rubinstein reportedly plans to take some time off and hasn't yet figured out his next move. Other former WebOS executives have landed at other companies, including Richard Kerris, former vice president of WebOS worldwide developer relations, who went to Nokia; and Michael Rizkalla, senior director of WebOS application development, who joined Xobni.

In an interview last week, HP CEO Meg Whitman said the unambiguous direction HP has set with Open WebOS has helped bring stability to the WebOS business unit.

"Now there is a clear vision of what we're trying to accomplish ... I think people are signing on. Some are going to sign off, and that's OK, because we actually now have a way forward," Whitman told CRN.