Henri Richard EVP WW Field and Customer Ops, NetApp

NetApp, Inc. announced the appointment of Henri Richard as EVP of WW field and customer operations.

He will join the company at the beginning of the company’s FY’17.

He succeeds Rob Salmon, who is retiring following more than 22 years at the company.

Richard brings over 30 years of experience to the role. He has held senior management positions leading global sales, support, and marketing teams at prominent global technology companies. He joins from SanDisk Corporation, where he was responsible for driving the growth of the company across a diverse set of customers, products, and applications. He oversaw at NetApp the growth and diversification of the company in the enterprise space.

“It’s an energizing time at NetApp, and we welcome Henri to the team to help us take advantage of our unique position in the changing IT landscape,” said George Kurian, CEO, NetApp. “Henri has a strong track record for results-oriented and hands-on leadership. His experience will be instrumental in helping NetApp build upon the strength of our Data Fabric strategy and our technology leadership position in flash as we pivot toward the growth areas of the market. With Henri’s leadership, we look forward to expanding the value we deliver from our differentiated portfolio, global customer base, broad partner ecosystem, and scalable pathways to market.”

“We thank Rob for his many contributions, and we wish him success as he moves into this new phase of his life,” continued Kurian.

In this role, Richard will drive expanding relationships with NetApp’s strategic technology partners, resellers, and customers across the globe. He will lead global customer success operations and field operations, which focus on customer-facing functions, and support NetApp’s ecosystem of channel, alliance, and service partners.

Throughout his 30-year career and before joining SanDisk, Henri Richard served in global executive roles at companies including Seagate, IBM, Webgain, AMD, and Freescale Semiconductor. He started his career in IT at Informatique Haute Performance, a company in Paris, France, that he founded to address the burgeoning need for PC-based computing in the 1980s. He earned a bachelor of science degree from the Ecole Nationale de Radiotechnique et d’Electronique Appliquée in Asnières, France.