At NetApp, Georgens President and COO, Mendoza Vice Chairman
NetApp is in fact slowly preparing the succession of two of its icons.
This is a Press Release edited by StorageNewsletter.com on January 31, 2008 at 3:35 pmNetApp today announced the promotion of Tom Georgens to the newly-created role of company president and chief operating officer,
overseeing the company’s product and field
operations.
The company also announced that veteran Tom Mendoza, who has
served as president since 2001, has been promoted to the newly created
position of vice chairman. In this position, Mendoza will focus on
customer advocacy, partnering with NetApp sales and channel partners to
deliver more value to customers and championing the company’s
values and leadership to a growing employee population. Both Mendoza and
Georgens continue to report directly to NetApp CEO Dan Warmenhoven.
These promotions are effective immediately.
“Tom Mendoza is an icon and a legend at NetApp
and among our customers and partners,” said
Dan Warmenhoven. “Our customers know him to be
a trusted advisor and listener. Our employees know that he lives our
values with passion every day. Freeing him from operational
responsibilities to focus his energy on our customers and culture will
help us become even more responsive to the market and deeply attuned to
the transformation happening in today’s data
centers.”
“Tom Georgens has demonstrated strong
leadership and passion for our values and culture,”
continued Warmenhoven. “As head of product
operations, he led the largest rollout of new products in our company’s
history and expanded our software portfolio, giving our customers
greater efficiency, flexibility, and functionality in their data
centers. Combining a truly flagship R&D engine in product operations
with the sales, marketing, and service expertise in our field operations
organization allows us to bring greater focus to our execution. I
believe that this will result in NetApp being more competitive, growing
faster, and delivering greater value to our customers. I am very excited
about both of these promotions and for the future of NetApp under their
expanded leadership.
The Role of Vice Chairman
The position of vice chairman is a newly created role at NetApp. This is
not a board of directors position, but a company position. The position’s
charter is to be the chief customer advocate and champion of customer
concerns, bringing them back into NetApp to shape product development
efforts and spot emerging enterprise trends. The vice chairman of the
company is also instrumental in infusing the NetApp culture into our
growing workforce around the world.
Mendoza Biography
Tom Mendoza joined NetApp in 1994 as the head of North American sales
and has served as the company’s president
since 2000. Mendoza has more than 31 years as a high-technology
executive. He has served in an advisory capacity on the board of
directors of Netscreen (acquired by Juniper) and Rhapsody (acquired by
Brocade) and currently serves on the board of Infoblox. He holds a
Bachelor of Arts degree in economics from the University of Notre Dame,
is an alumnus of Stanford University’s Executive Business Program, and
is a guest lecturer at both institutions. In September 2000, the
University of Notre Dame renamed its business school the Mendoza College
of Business upon an endowment from Tom and his wife, Kathy.
Mendoza has been the keynote speaker for such diverse organizations as
Oracle, Gartner, Veritas (now Symantec), Fujitsu-Siemens, and the United
States Marine Corps. He is a highly motivational speaker and often
speaks about corporate culture and leadership for organizations all over
the world.
Georgens Biography
Tom Georgens joined NetApp in October 2005 and has served as the company’s
executive vice president of product operations since January 2007. From
October 2005 until January 2007 he served as NetApp’s
executive vice president and general manager of enterprise storage
systems.
Before joining NetApp, Georgens spent nine years at Engenio, a
subsidiary of LSI Logic, the last two years as CEO. He also served in
various other positions, including president of LSI Logic Storage
Systems and executive vice president of LSI Logic. At Engenio, he built
the business into a successful OEM storage provider for companies such
as IBM, Sun Microsystems, StorageTek, Silicon Graphics, and NCR.
Prior to Engenio, Georgens spent 11 years at EMC in a variety of
engineering and marketing positions.
Georgens holds a Bachelor of Science degree and a Master of Engineering
degree in computer and systems engineering from Rensselaer Polytechnic
Institute as well as a Master of Business Administration degree from
Babson College.
Comments
With these two newly created positions, NetApp is in fact slowly preparing the succession of two of its icons:
- CEO Dan Warmenhoven, 57, who joins the company in 1994 and led the IPO in 1995,
- and Tom Mendoza, an incredible salesman a week younger than Warmenhoven, at NetApp since 1994, president since 2000 and now vice-chairman (but, curiously, not seating at the board).
The two other legends are current executive VPs Dave Hitz and James Lau, the two founders in charge of engineering and strategy, both of them working formerly at Auspex.
These four people are called “The Office of the CEO”.
We think that two NetApp’s executives have a good chance to be promoted at the highest level of the storage company: Tom Georgens and Jay Kidd.
After 11 years at EMC, Georgens, now promoted president and COO of NetApp, spent nine years at Engenio, a subsidiary of LSI Logic, the last two ones as CEO. He joins NetApp in 2005 as executive VP and GM of enterprise storage systems and then, in 2007, was named executive VP of product operations.
Kidd is currently chief marketing officer at NetApp and was previously CTO of Brocade.
In a recent interwiew, Warmenhoven told us:” We’re working on a succession plan. That’s a very active area for the board”. But he adds:” And I’m not stepping down anytime soon”. He also said that the goal is to find someone inside the company:” That would be our preference. Network Appliance is a very unique culture. And part of what we’d like to do when the leadership changes is make sure the culture doesn’t change.”
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