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The executive widely seen as the heir to IBM has given up a wide-ranging shake-up of management, as the US board of computer manufacturers backed his support behind current executive Arvind Krishna to complete an attempt of review.
Jim Whitehurst, the former chief executive of Red Hat, had been placed in pole position to take first place after IBM agreed to pay $ 37 billion for the open source software company in 2017. He was later named president of IBM, a title the company usually reserves for its next CEO.
The news of his departure wiped out 4% of IBM’s stock price on Friday. However, Krishna, who had been seen by many on Wall Street as a transitional chief executive, thought of the move as a split from IBM’s current path under his leadership.
“He’s done amazing for us, but he wasn’t going to be here forever,” he said of Whitehurst. In an interview with the Financial Times, he added: “Acquired CEOs typically last one or two years.”
The head of IBM suggested that Whitehurst had been in the race to succeed him, but that hopes of taking over in the short term had been dashed, as the company’s board backed him to carry out the next. IBM review stage.
“This is a very viable candidate. But I can’t speculate on what the time was for him, ”he said of Whitehurst.
Krishna noted the fact that the council had appointed him chairman and chief executive earlier this year as a sign of his support. The broader high school bachelor’s degree announced Friday referred to “building a leadership team that would lead IBM to where I lead it,” he said.
Krishna was the architect of the acquisition of Red Hat, a farm deal designed to give IBM a stronger position in the cloud computing business against giants like Amazon Web Services and Microsoft.
Former head of research, Krishna defended the purchase of Red Hat at the hands of former CEO Ginni Rometty, before tackling himself last April. The succession welcomed Wall Street as a sign that IBM was focusing more on core technology, although it was seen as a substitute at the top until the board was ready to elevate Whitehurst, which had previously passed 12 years running Red Hat.
IBM makes a rare hiring for seniors outside the company on Friday, announcing the appointment of former Hewlett Packard Enterprise executive Ric Lewis as head of IBM’s systems division, including its mainframe operations .
Among the rising IBM executives as part of the reshuffle is Rob Thomas, head of cloud operations and data platforms, who holds the position of chief sales and marketing manager for the company. Tom Rosamilia, formerly head of systems, was appointed to lead the company’s cognitive and cloud systems division, which plays a central role in the effort to design a position for IBM in artificial intelligence and cloud computing. .
The management renewal announced on Friday was designed to make the company “much more focused on execution and much more technology,” Krishna said.
He added that Whitehurst had agreed to continue as an advisor and was not leaving to take a job at another company. “She is OK. It will not go anywhere right now, ”Krishna said.
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