Who Went Where: The Top Headcount Changes of 2019

Each year, technology and software companies make headlines as they drive change in the software-defined world. But every so often the people behind the scenes make headlines and changes of their own. This is why each month SDxCentral publishes its Headcount column tracking the latest executive hirings, promotions, and staff changes. Below we’ve compiled this year’s biggest Headcount moves as compiled by the SDxCentral Editorial staff. Each year, technology and software companies make headlines as they drive change in the software-defined world. But every so often the people behind the scenes make headlines and changes of their own. This is why each month SDxCentral publishes its Headcount column tracking the latest executive hirings, promotions, and staff changes. Below we’ve compiled this year’s biggest Headcount moves as compiled by the SDxCentral Editorial staff. Oracle Chairman Larry Ellison said the company would not name a new co-CEO to replace the late Mark Hurd and instead move forward with Safra Catz as its sole leader. Ellison made the announcement during the company’s second quarter 2020 earnings call with financial analysts. Hurd passed away in October just weeks after taking a leave of absence from the company for health reasons. “We have no plans for having a second CEO,” Ellison said, according to a Seeking Alpha transcript of the call. “It was an unusual situation where Mark and Safra were an absolutely fantastic team. But we have complete confidence in our existing management team. We’re doing a lot of recruiting and you’ll see a lot of announcements…that we’re hiring a bunch of people at the next layer down. Those people will be the next CEO when both Safra and I retire, which is not anytime soon.” The virtualized security and SDN vendor announced that CEO and President Lee Chen retirement, and selected Dhrupad Trivedi to lead the company. Chen, who founded A10 in 2004 and has served as its only CEO, will remain chairman of the company’s board of directors. Trivedi joind A10 Networks from Belden, where he most recently was CTO of the company and its EVP running itsTripwire security software business. Cumulus Networks CTO JR Rivers left the open-networking company he co-founded nine years ago for a new role as a senior principal engineer at Amazon Web Services (AWS). Rivers left Cumulus “looking for [his] next challenge,” according to his LinkedIn profile. Rivers served as Cumulus’ CEO from January 2010 until March 2016, when he announced that Josh Leslie would succeed him as CEO and Rivers would take the CTO role. Sunil Potti, Nutanix chief product and development officer, jumped ship for Google Cloud. Potti resigned from Nutanix effective June 21, to “pursue another opportunity,” according to company filing with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC). Potti played a major role in Nutanix’s product roadmap including its work integrating Nutanix’s software stack with Google Cloud — Nutanix calls this initiative “Test Drive.” Meanwhile, former Google Cloud CTO Brian Stevens joined Nutanix’s board of directors. “We are getting a very good Google exec to become our board member as they quit Google, so there’s going to be this infusion of talent that goes both ways,” Nutanix CEO Dheeraj Pandey told SDxCentral. Juniper Networks former CTO Bikash Koley is set to leave the company and will be replaced by Raj Yavatkar. The networking company first announced Koley’s resignation in a Nov. 27 SEC filing. It said Koley would remain in his current role until Jan. 3, 2020. Juniper said that Yavatkar will begin his employment at the vendor this month. However, the company did not mention Koley in a press statement nor in an emailed statement sent to SDxCentral: “Mr. Yavatkar is anticipated to join the Juniper team in December, and we look forward to his technical thought leadership and vision as he helps us lead the next era of innovation at Juniper,” it said. Yavatkar will report to Juniper CEO Rami Rahim. Formerly unemployed SAP CEO Bill McDermott will take over as president and CEO of ServiceNow by the end of this year. And to sweeten the pot, McDermott will also take a board seat for the company. McDermott earlier this year announced an abrupt departure from SAP. The company said in a statement that its long-serving CEO “decided not to renew his contract.” McDermott had led SAP for a decade and been with that firm since 2002. SAP is moving to a two-headed leadership model helmed by Jennifer Morgan and Christian Klein. SUSE named former SAP leader and veteran technology executive Melissa Di Donato as its new CEO. Di Donato replaced Nils Brauckmann, who retired from the company after serving as CEO for eight years. Brauckmann delivered significant business expansion during his tenure, including record-breaking revenues for the company’s fiscal 2018. He also oversaw SUSE’s acquisition by Sweden-based private equity firm EQT VII last year. At SAP, Di Donato served as COO and chief revenue officer (CRO) where she was responsible for the company’s financial position and customer satisfaction of the company’s digital core solutions. She had previously held senior executive positions at Salesforce, where she was recognized for her contributions to growing global organizations and awarded the 2018 Digital Masters Award for Excellence in Commercial Management. Qualcomm CFO George Davis left the company after a six-year tenure. Davis also served as a member of the company’s executive committee. David Wise, who serves as SVP and treasurer, will serve as interim CFO while the company searches for a permanent replacement. Wise has been at Qualcomm since 1997, and has been a member of its senior finance leadership team for more than 12 years. Davis’ employment status was quickly updated as he reappeared days later at Intel where he will now serve as CFO. He will report to Intel CEO Bob Swan, who was named the permanent chief of the chipmaker in January. Swan served as Intel’s CFO from October 2016 up until his promotion. Mesosphere appointed Mike Fey as CEO, taking over from the company’s co-founder Florian Leibert. In the blog post, Leibert wrote: “To accelerate our forward momentum and lead us to a higher level of success, including the possibility of an IPO, I believe that it makes sense to transition Mesosphere from a founder-led company to one headed by someone who has experience leading companies into public markets.” Following Fey’s appointment, Leibert transitioned into a new role at the company that is focused on customers, strategy, and technology. Fey joined Mesosphere from Symantec where he served as president and COO. And prior to that, Fey was the president and COO at hardware company Blue Coat and held executive positions at both Intel and McAfee. Make sure to check out our monthly Headcount column to stay abreast of the latest top executive moves. If you’d like SDxCentral to report on your company’s movers and shakers, or if you’ve got a tip about layoffs and restructuring, please send the information to Sydney Sawaya (ssawaya@sdxcentral.com).