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HP scores ex-NetApp exec to replace Mr 3PAR

Scores, er, Goel to head up storage ops

+Comment HP is appointing Manish Goel to head up its storage operation as a replacement for the departing David Scott.

Scott retired on 6 March, and had the distinction of being employed by HP twice.

After his first stint as an HP exec, he left to start up storage company 3PAR, which was then acquired by HP - with Scott put in place to lead all HP’s storage systems efforts.

Goel will report to Antonio Neri, senior vice president and GM of HP’s Enterprise Group, who is a 20-year HP veteran.

Goel joined Big Data analytics startup Guavus as its CEO after being hand-picked by founder and previous CEO Anukool Lakhina. It was not a successful engagement and Goel left nine months later, with Lakhina resuming the CEO role.

A LinkedIn profile under Goel's name gives the impression of a career spent mainly as a big company executive.

Messages regarding Goel’s appointment flying around HP use sporting metaphors: “We’re bringing the fight to our competition and we do that through our attitude of refusing to lose” with a “win big or go home attitude”. Neri is said to be excited about having hired Goel, who is described as a strategic leader.

Video clip of Manish Goel

HP’s StoreServ (3PAR) storage systems are on a roll and that momentum has to be kept up, even accelerated, while the primary SAN storage array supporting products like StoreVirtual (software SAN), StoreOnce (backup), StoreAll (Archive object storage), StoreEver (Tape), StorEasy (files) are organised and developed to grow revenues too.

Comment

We understand Neri believes HP has picked a respected expert in the storage industry and a proven senior exec in a large global organisation with multiple billion dollars in revenue. Goel spent seven years at NetApp from March 2002 to September 2013, starting as a senior director for corporate development and finishing as an EVP for product operations. George Kurian currently fills that slot at NetApp.

As an ex-DataONTAP man, Goel might be accustomed to having all storage products integrated under a single umbrella. Yet unlike NetApp, HP is a servers and networks systems company and its storage world view is not bounded by the networked array. A whole massive new world of Big Data analytics is opening up and HP needs to play in that sandpit too, with Goel’s products supporting HP’s Vertica analytics platform, and Hadoop with, perhaps, tailored Hadoop storage clusters.

HP is keen on what it calls a New Style of Business, one in which “the business process of the future will be viewed not as a fixed, unchangeable thing. It will, instead, be viewed as an experiment; something that can be changed by the business people who own it, who rely on it for their profit margins.”

There is, we're told, a “need to use structured data (like the click streams in our applications) and human interaction data (like Twitter or the comments on key web sites) to give us the feedback to improve our 'experiments'. “

Storage is obviously important, both to store the data and to have its own development inside HP operate the same way. Goel’s job is to have HP build storage products that make it simpler for customers to store, secure, archive and retrieve data. Neri wants him to help accelerate HP’s growth in the storage market, and, back to sporting metaphors, take the fight to the competition.

So go on, Manish, score a few storage goals for HP. ®

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