Hewlett Packard Enterprise (HPE) has welcomed Jim O’Dorisio, a seasoned professional with a 14-year tenure at Dell Technologies, as the new Senior Vice President and General Manager of its $4.4 billion storage business. O’Dorisio assumed his role three weeks ago, having previously served as Senior Vice President and General Manager at information management provider Iron Mountain.
Before his stint at Iron Mountain from January 2018 to December 2020, O’Dorisio held the position of Vice President and Chief Operating Officer (COO) of business and technology operations at Dell Technologies. His responsibilities at Dell included key roles such as COO of the backup and recovery systems division, Vice President and Product Management in the storage business, and General Manager and Vice President of the backup software group.
O’Dorisio now reports directly to Fidelma Russo, Executive Vice President and General Manager of hybrid cloud at HPE. Russo and O’Dorisio share a professional history, having worked together at Iron Mountain and Dell Technologies. Russo served as CTO and Executive Vice President of Global Technology & Operations at Iron Mountain from May 2017 to May 2020 and as Senior Vice President and General Manager of the enterprise storage business at Dell Technologies from January 2011 to January 2017.
The appointment of O’Dorisio marks a transition in HPE’s storage leadership, replacing Tom Black, who held the position of Executive Vice President and General Manager of the storage business for three years before moving to a role as Executive Vice President and General Manager of private cloud for HPE GreenLake.
HPE’s storage business faced a 13% decline in the most recent quarter, reaching $1.1 billion, with an 8.1% operating profit margin compared to the previous year’s 15.4%. Despite this, the company is gearing up to enhance its market share against competitors like Dell Technologies, Pure Storage, and NetApp, especially now that the supply chain crisis has subsided.
HPE remains committed to investing in storage and compute specialty resources, despite streamlining its North American sales roles last year. Industry experts emphasize the necessity for HPE to increase its channel investment to compete effectively in the highly competitive storage market, with rivals significantly amplifying their channel presence.
C.R. Howdyshell, CEO of Advizex, a Fulcrum IT Partners company and a prominent HPE partner, notes that HPE needs to swiftly augment its channel investments to secure storage gains, emphasizing the success of Dell in partnering with the channel to drive market share growth.
Fidelma Russo, in a statement last October, expressed HPE’s readiness to gain storage market share by leveraging its Alletra storage product leadership and strategic go-to-market investments. She highlighted the rapid customer adoption of HPE Alletra, which has set records in the company’s storage platform history.
Russo sees the opportunity for HPE not only to compete with traditional storage rivals but also to gain traction against public cloud providers. With approximately 10% market share within storage, she believes HPE has significant room for expansion, especially as customers weigh the options of placing their data on-premises or in the public cloud. Conversations with customers increasingly revolve around expanding their on-premises storage footprint, driven in part by the growing significance of artificial intelligence in storage decision-making.
In summary, HPE’s strategic moves, including the appointment of Jim O’Dorisio and continued investments in storage technology, position the company for growth and market share gains in the evolving storage landscape, which is witnessing a heightened focus on on-premises solutions and cloud-enabled architectures.
