David Goeckeler CEO, Western Digital

Western Digital Corp. announced that David Goeckeler has been appointed CEO and a member of the board of directors, effective March 9, 2020.

He currently serves as EVP and GM of Cisco’s $34 billion networking and security business.

He succeeds Steve Milligan, who previously announced his intended retirement.

“David is a transformative leader with an exceptional track record of driving highly profitable, core businesses at scale while innovating successful business strategies that expanded into new markets and generated new revenue sources,” said Matthew Massengill, COB. “With experience as a software engineer as well as running large semiconductor development projects, his breadth of technology expertise, business acumen and history of building and operating world-class organizations make him the right person to lead Western Digital in a world increasingly driven by applications and data.”

“The industry is facing an exciting inflection point where customers of every size, vertical and geography are deploying business infrastructure that is software-driven, enabled by data and powered by the cloud. This megatrend has only just now reached an initial stage of adoption and will drive a massive wave of new opportunity,” said Goeckeler. “In this IT landscape, the explosive growth of connected devices will continue fueling an ever-increasing demand for access to data. With large-scale HDD drive and semiconductor memory franchises, Western Digital is strongly positioned to capitalize on this emerging opportunity and push the boundaries of both software and physical hardware innovation within an extremely important layer of the technology stack.”

“Over the last decade, Western Digital has built a highly-regarded platform that helps customers derive real value from their data. I look forward to working together with the outstanding leadership team and innovating alongside the talented Western Digital employees around the world,” he added.

“On behalf of Western Digital employees worldwide, I am delighted to welcome David to Western Digital. He joins our company at an exciting and promising time, and I wish him great success as he leads Western Digital in its next chapter,” said Milligan.

As previously announced, he will remain with the company in an advisory role until September 2020 to ensure a transition.

David Goeckeler is currently the EVP and GM of Cisco’s networking and security business with responsibility for more than $34 billion of the company’s global technology franchise. He leads a global team of more than 25,000 engineers and oversees Cisco’s networking and security strategy and market acceleration, including development operations for the company’s technology portfolio and strategic acquisitions. A 19-year Cisco veteran, he led the definition and development of what is regarded as the best product and technology portfolio in Cisco’s history.

Prior to his current role, he was the leader of Cisco’s security business and was instrumental in defining Cisco’s threat-centric security strategy and transitioning the business to a software and recurring revenue-based model, and returning the business to share gaining growth. Under his leadership, the security group also acquired and integrated multiple companies, solidifying Cisco’s place as the largest IT Security vendor in the industry.

He holds bachelor’s degrees in computer science and mathematics from the University of Missouri at Columbia, a master’s degree in computer science from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and a master’s degree in business administration from both Columbia University and the University of California at Berkeley.

In 2012, he received Frost and Sullivan’s Excellence Award in Engineering Operations.

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