Dell is bringing in two heavy hitters for its leadership ranks. Former Lenovo and AMD president Rory Read is leaving the chip maker to be the new COO and president of Dell’s worldwide commercial sales group.
Following right behind Read is Paul Perez of Cisco Systems who was named chief technology officer of Dell’s Enterprise Group.
Company founder and CEO Michael Dell said both men will add depth to Dell’s enterprise expertise and leadership. He hopes that both Read and Perez will help accelerate Dell’s enterprise business globally.
Last fall Read was replaced as president and CEO of AMD by Lisa Su, who was the COO. Read was appointed executive advisor at AMD and called the switch at leadership part of a global succession plan.
While at AMD, Read was able to return the chip maker to profitability by diversifying product lines away from just the PC market and into more lucrative enterprise markets. He also had a long run of fastest growing hardware vendor during his last few years as president of Lenovo. Read is a resident of Austin, Tex. Dell is headquartered in Round Rock, Tex., a suburb of Austin. His new role will see him take over global go-to-market initiatives, omni-channel sales planning and enablement.
Read said, in a statement, that Dell is one of the most exciting companies in the industry right now with its ascension into the top tier of enterprise vendors and, soon, as the only credible end-to-end IT company.
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Read will also be charged with leading Dell’s cross-business unit and country-level operational planning to further the vendor’s channel momentum as well as its direct selling capabilities. He also will own global systems integrator relationships and the global OEM business.
Meanwhile, Pérez, as CTO, will focus on Dell architecture, design and build-out of the next line of data centre products. Perez most recently served as vice president and GM Cisco’s Computing Systems Product Group, responsible for the UCS server line.
Read’s started date at Dell is on April 6, while Pérez begins his new job today. Both Read and Perez will report to Marius Haas, Dell’s chief commercial officer and president of the vendor’s enterprise solutions group.